The company that created a currency for the internet, Beenz.com, yesterday admitted that it had sacked 180 staff and could be sold.

Beenz, which raised $89m (£61m) from investors including Oracle chief Larry Ellison, said that it would cut a further 20 jobs at its British operations after a strategic review.

It would leave a company that had employed 260 people in 13 offices worldwide at the height of the dot.com boom with just 60 staff spread across five international offices.

The company rewards net users with "beenz", redeemable for goods at participating websites. Like many other online loyalty schemes it has failed to generate the revenues it hoped for, however.

A link-up with or takeover by a bricks and mortar player looks like the most likely route ahead.

"The company is in discussions with several potential strategic partners, the goal of which is to enable the long-term future and value of the beenz business," a statement said.

Beenz declined to say how much cash it had left or what revenues it is generating. There are 5.4m beenz accounts.

Charles Cohen, Beenz's founder and chief executive, warned in December that volatile stock markets had sent many of his customers out of business and he would have to scale back Beenz's international network, which stretched from London and New York to China and Japan.

At the time he denied that Beenz was going bust. "We still have tens of millions of dollars in the bank, but we don't want to be one of these dot.coms that rockets along like a train, crashes into a wall and everybody dies," he said.

Other backers include Apax, Softbank, Vivendi, Jellyworks and Monaco-based businessman Andrew Regan.