Basically this is what happened. As you all know the pig passed away recently.
When the pig was alive he ran a pretty big gambling organization. First of all a virtual redeemable currency was established, 'carrot slips' as they were called. These slips or credits have a redeemable value of 1 baby carrot apiece. They are traded online. You can also use dollars or other currency to purchase carrot slips at an exchange rate determined based on costco prices of baby carrots (which would fluctuate). You can't redeem your carrot slips for dollars. The carrot was chosen b'cos they are almost universally enjoyed by any small animal out there. So it was a virtual currency that was only really of use to small animals. Of course there is also a trade in romaine lettuce, but that is done that is done through middlemen who buy the lettuce and then traded it for carrot slips on a pretty small scale.
The only reason this 'virtual currency' actually works is b'cos of the real money that goes into the system in exchange for carrot slips. These dollars facilitate the purchases of carrots at costco or other nationwide 'warehouse' stores, which are then used for redemptions. There were numerous local groups to facilitate these redemptions. At some point a markup was establshed in the redemption process in order to ensure that there were enough local groups willing to do redemptions.
Basically the pig's local group that did redemptions ran up a slight surplus every month. But the real money came in from the gambling type pools the pig would run. Odds would be set up on everything, for instance when a popular small animal went missing, the pig would post odds on what day she would return and small animals would bid the virtual currency into those pools. With these gambling type pools the pig was creating a large net influx of carrot slips into his own accounts, which he would retire. This brought a net influx of cash into the system that the pig would then donate to keeping the site around.
Now with the pig gone the small animals that took over are just not able to run the gambling operation as well as he did. The pig seemed to have a gift for choosing profitable odds, it's as if one dark horse after another kept comming in and it seemed like he would make out big every time a significant bet was held. Today the local group of small animals is running the gambling operation as best as they can, but it's just not that profitable. Or reliable / regular. They've been sending what they can to the site, but it's just not enough to keep the site around. So once that site goes down, they'll find somewhere else to send it to. I have no idea where, please don't ask.