Hacker News Reader

Most likely on the spread.

It's like currency exchange booths that have "0% fees" but the buy price is different from the sell price.

Circle doesn't have a spread. There is only one price for both buy and sell.

I'm guessing they were just burning VC money.

Their spread was buy only

They don't. They will be acquired eventually with their ever growing user base. Acquirer will have costs. Retain x% of users. Profit.

Dunno why this is being downvoted. The answer is apparently "they don't".

That's good to know. The combination of "We hold your Bitcoins" and "no fees" has a very bad track record. Over half of Bitcoin exchanges and "hosted wallets" turned out to be "take the money and run" operations. It's thus good that they're getting out of Bitcoin.

Interest for holding money? I know when they sold Bitcoin, they charged a small markup, similar to what Coinbase charged.

The long term goal might have been to get businesses onboard and charge them to accept money.