Whatever Happened to Amazon Coin? (AMZN)

Going on five years ago Amazon introduced Amazon Coin to purchase apps for their Kindle. Here's the press release:
Introducing Amazon Coins: A New Virtual Currency for Kindle Fire

There was a small flurry of excitement, Amazon was giving them away as a sort of "loyalty reward" and then.....nothing.

We had a couple posts on the AC:
February 2013
Amazon is Introducing "Amazon Coins" Virtual Currency (AMZN)

"Currency" may be stretching it at this moment but the potential is there.

May 2013
"Amazon Coins Expands to France, Italy, and Spain – Submit Now for Amazon Coins worth Millions of Euros" (AMZN)

That was the headline at Amazon's Developer page.
I was reminded of this story while reading about Scotland coin. As far as I can tell AmazonCoin is the perfect cryptocurrency for.....Amazon.

But that was it. Apparently people still use them to buy apps though..
And then on November 1, 2017 DomainNameWire had a small story:

An Amazon coin? Amazon.com registers cryptocurrency domain names
Amazon.com registered three domain names yesterday related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies: amazoncryptocurrencies.com, amazoncryptocurrency.com and amazonethereum.com.

The domain name registrations might suggest that Amazon is getting ready to do something on the Ethereum blockchain or release its own cryptocurrency. However, I caution that Amazon is overzealous when it comes to defensive domain name registrations....MORE 

Later that day CoinDesk picked it up:

Amazon Subsidiary Registers Cryptocurrency and Ethereum Domains
E-commerce giant Amazon has registered three cryptocurrency-related web domains, online records show.

According to information from Whois Lookup, three domains – "amazonethereum.com," "amazoncryptocurrency.com" and "amazoncryptocurrencies.com" – were registered on Oct. 31. The domains are linked to Amazon Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. that has been attributed to past patent filings from the e-commerce company.
Phone numbers listed on the registration documents connect to Amazon's legal department, though a representative of that office could not be reached by press time. The registrations were first reported by industry news site DomainNameWire.

At this time, it's not entirely clear what purpose the domain names will serve....MORE 

And that's where it stands.
For now this is just a heads up for our loyal and long-suffering readers but down the road this could get interesting.