TC Roundup: Amazon woos EBay's once-loyal merchants with faster sales growth

Amazon woos EBay's once-loyal merchants with faster sales growth: EBay Inc.'s once-loyal merchants are moving more of their business to Amazon.com Inc., saying they get more for their money by selling merchandise via the Web retailer.

Amazon's pool of merchants doubled to about 2 million in 2014, while the number of sellers on EBay has remained flat at 25 million in the past two years. Businesses that at first set up online storefronts on EBay say they're surprised how quickly sales surge on Amazon once products appear on both sites. (Bloomberg)

Google ventures-backed Bitcoin exchange Buttercoin is shutting down: Buttercoin, a bitcoin exchange startup backed by Y Combinator and Google Ventures, isclosing its doors at the end of this month after failing to raise new investment.

"Buttercoin will be turning off our service on April 10th at 11PM Pacific," the company said in a note on its website. "Be sure to move your bitcoins to another service and remove your dollar balances by Friday April 10th at 11PM." (Techcrunch)

Where Apple products are born: A rare glimpse inside Foxconn's factory gates: Before a rash of suicides focused attention on Apple's manufacturing suppliers, few people in America knew or even cared much about its giant contract manufacturer in China, Foxconn.

The Taiwanese supplier came in for even more unflattering attention in a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of working conditions inside these out-of-sight factories, where hundreds of thousands of anonymous workers assemble the iPhones and iPads that have made Apple the world's most valuable publicly traded company. (Recode)