The Crypto Community Isn't Sad or Surprised By R3's Reported Woes

Fortune reported Thursday that R3 is facing a cash crunch, coming just over a year after the company announced a $107 million funding round to "Bring blockchain services to the financial sector".

R3 first launched in 2014 with the stated goal of applying the technology underpinnings of blockchain to the finance sector, culminating in the launch of their distributed ledger technology platform Corda.

R3 later ran into headwinds, losing JPMorgan and Goldman, among others, as consortium members in 2017, as reported by CoinDesk.

Fortune, citing two former employees at R3, reported that the company could be out of money by early next year even with the recently raised $107 million funds.

One of them added that the number was also likely "Overstated" as it "Included consulting fees from prior years that R3 reclassified as equity under terms of its partner agreements."

For some observers, the reported problems represent a kind of comeuppance in light of comments from R3's executives about bitcoin.

For people new to the space wondering why anyone cares: many of R3's execs aggressively derided bitcoin for *years*, and really spearheaded the backwards "Blockchain not bitcoin" nonsense.

To this observer, the reported woes highlight the hard lessons for investors.

Investors learning the hard way to be skeptical of hand-wavy blockchain hype.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.