$9 billion payments provider Stripe ends support for Bitcoin

$9 billion valuation payment service provider Stripe has officially announced that it is reducing its Bitcoin integration. Stripe users will be encouraged to withdraw from Bitcoin payments for the next three months. After this period, Bitcoin will no longer be accepted.

Stripe added Bitcoin to the system in 2015 and allowed all merchants using the platform to receive Bitcoin payments.. Over time, high fees and slow transaction confirmations disrupted the network.

The company cites confirmation times and high fees as reasons for abandoning Bitcoin:

“Bitcoin has become less useful for payments. Transaction confirmation times have increased significantly; This led to a higher failure rate of transactions in fiat currency.. Moreover, commissions have increased a lot.. A normal Bitcoin transaction charges tens of dollars, making Bitcoin transactions as expensive as bank transfers.”

‘Bitcoin is an asset’

Stripe, cryptocurrencies optimistic about the issue, but the company sees Bitcoin more as an asset than a payment network:

“Within the last couple of years, as the block size of Bitcoin has reached limits, it has become better suited to the definition of an asset rather than a medium of exchange.”

Finally, the company left the door open to rethinking Bitcoin as a payment method in the future:

“The Lightning Network, which is on the agenda to make Bitcoin faster and other solutions We are interested in. Bitcoin may be available for repayments in the future.”