Airbnb, Inc has acquired ChangeCoin, Inc., the company behind the ChangeTip Bitcoin online tipping platform.

First reported by Quartz, the deal is said to be an “acqui-hire” and does not include any intellectual property rights.

Founded in 2014, ChangeCoin describes itself as providing micropayment infrastructure for the Internet.

ChangeTip (its only product) integrates payment processing with social media with the idea of changing a “like” into a method of financial appreciation, “redefining the way people think about the value exchange of social channels.”

The firm is said to be run “by ex-Yahoo engineer and noted bitcoin entrepreneur Nick Sullivan,” and has between 11 and 50 employees.

According to the report, Airbnb had been looking at a few Bitcoin and Blockchain startups with an aim of studying what the technology could do for its services.

Blockchain rentals

While there has been no official confirmation of the deal, the acqui-hire is believed to be due to an interest by Airbnb to implement a Blockchain based rentals platform.

As Business Insider explains:

Rumors swirled after [Airbnb] cofounder and CTO Nathan Blecharczyk hinted that the company was interested in ways that people’s online reputations could be shared to build trust in response to a question about the blockchain. Typically, only Airbnb would know if you trashed your last rental, but with blockchain technology, you could potentially be able to share that information so other people, like your landlord, could know if you’re trustworthy or not.

Quartz explains further:

If Airbnb can figure out a way to make its user profiles immutable and universally readable, they could become a trusted form of digital identity, a bit like the profiles that credit bureaus create for individuals. If these identities can be “exported” to other platforms, as Blecharczyk said, they could become hugely valuable. An Uber driver, for example, might know if his next passenger came with a history of leaving Airbnb properties damaged.

Using the Blockchain for identity management is an interesting idea, particularly when it comes to uncorruptable information sharing.

The flip though is that there remains unaddressed privacy issues, let alone that a system such as this could also unfairly tar Airbnb users who have done nothing wrong but have been unfairly targeted by owners of dubious rentals who do nothing more than attempt to scam people who stay with them.

Image credit: ChangeTip.