Simple Honey Inc. today announced its acquisition by OpenCoin, the company building the Ripple protocol for a new virtual currency and distributed open source payment network.
The simplehoney team will form the core of OpenCoin's consumer engagement team, and will focus on usability -- making all virtual currency and the Ripple network easy for people to understand and use.
"Our team shares a vision for creating simple, accessible tools that breakdown big consumer problems," said Joyce Kim, co-founder of simplehoney. "We believe that the world economy is on the cusp of a major evolution, and we want to make it easy for anyone, anywhere to be a part of that change through Ripple."
The simplehoney team has successfully launched targeted vertical applications for the travel and shopping categories. At OpenCoin, they will help build a new open source, distributed payments network and virtual currency called Ripples. Founders Joyce Kim and Eric Nakagawa and their team will join a talented OpenCoin team that includes Chris Larsen, the founder of E-LOAN and Prosper.com; Jed McCaleb, the founder of eDonkey and Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox; and Stefan Thomas, the creator of BitcoinJS.