Payment platform Stripe is dropping support for bitcoin

midian182

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Stripe, the platform that helps over 100,000 business accept online payments, has announced it will stop supporting bitcoin in April. The firm is placing the blame on rising transaction times and increased failure rates, along with fees that are about as expensive as bank wires.

Stripe’s product manager, Tom Karlo, wrote that bitcoin has evolved into an asset rather than a currency and that fewer customers have a desire to use it, mostly because of the rise in transaction fees.

"For a regular Bitcoin transaction, a fee of tens of U.S. dollars is common, making Bitcoin transactions about as expensive as bank wires," explained Karlo.

The news could see bitcoin’s price take yet another hit. A series of incidents, including new regulations introduced by South Korea, have seen its price slump recently. On January 6 it stood at $17,135; at the time of writing it is $10,775.

Stripe, which counts Lyft, Facebook, and Target among its customers, became the first major payments platform to support bitcoin back in 2014. It hoped that accepting the cryptocurrency would allow people in places with low credit card penetration or prohibitively high card fees to perform online transactions.

But the high demand for bitcoin in recent times has seen its price fluctuate, resulting in payments taking longer. "By the time the transaction is confirmed, fluctuations in Bitcoin price mean that it's for the 'wrong' amount," said Karlo.

Stripe will start winding down support for bitcoin payments immediately, with all transactions coming to a halt on April 23.

The decision will likely upset bitcoin fans, but Stripe isn't shutting the door on all cryptocurrencies. Karlo writes that the company is still optimistic about Lightning, OmiseGO, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. Stripe may even add support for Stellar, in which it has a stake.

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Failure rates are BS, but Bitcoin is a dead crypto. I wish it would crash already so that alts that are actually useful can start making headway.

Bitcoin was a successful experiment but it failed in practice. Transaction times and fees as well as the costs associated withing mining (IE: processing transactions) has been it's downfall. Just fail already!
 
Failure rates are BS, but Bitcoin is a dead crypto. I wish it would crash already so that alts that are actually useful can start making headway.

Bitcoin was a successful experiment but it failed in practice. Transaction times and fees as well as the costs associated withing mining (IE: processing transactions) has been it's downfall. Just fail already!

If the lightning network does not come this year, I strongly suggest pulling all your assets out of BTC. I think ETH/LTC will be the next "BTC Powerhouse"... I know, I know, XRB and what not but its marketing for average joe is poop....
 
Hashgraph is the future. It's byzantine fault-tolerant and fully scalable whereas Bitcoin's blockchain and even Ethereum's blockchain, simply isn't. As an experiment, Bitcoin is a huge success. We have learned more than we ever could have about the feasibility of cryptocurrencies. It's paved the foundation for many competing technologies and the seed has been planted for public acceptance of cryptocurrencies. However Bitcoin in its current state is stretched to its limits and the weaknesses of the blockchain are now evident for all to see. Processing power and energy requirements for mining has already reached unsustainable levels and it's only going to get worse. The GPU market is completely corralled by miners and average consumers can only pray for some slim hope on the distant horizon.

The blockchain by its very design was meant to slow itself down which is antithetical to the nature of a system meant for high-speed scalability. It was long believed that fast systems sacrifice security and secure systems sacrifice speed, but with Hashgraph you can have both, without needing a small country's worth of electricity to keep maintaining a blockchain that never stops growing.
 
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