Diamond Circle Suspends Operations Amid Cash Crisis

Australian bitcoin hardware manufacturer Diamond Circle has suspended operations citing a lack of capital.

The company, which launched Australia's first cashless ATM last year, is currently seeking a buyer for its wallet service, cloud hosted platform, NFC card technology, ATM network, hardware, bitcoin point-of-sale solution, data, trademarks and trade secrets, as well as the source code for all its platform components.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Stephen Rowlison, CEO at Diamond Circle, said that the decision had been taken based on a "lack of capital to continue system upkeep".

Rowlison added that it was a "tenuous situation for shareholders and creditors", but explained that the technological methods used meant there would be no impact to customers, as the company does not retain private keys to wallets.

The CEO is expected to make an official announcement "within days", alerting users that the wallet service has been permanently suspended, after "ensuring that they have transferred their bitcoins to another wallet".

The company is currently considering offers, the CEO said, but specifics could not be revealed at this time.