Microsoft Walks Back its Bitcoin Retraction, Blaming Inaccurate Information
I think we were all a little perplexed by the news that Microsoft was planning at least a partial shutdown of its bitcoin operations, based on a notice spotted on the Microsoft website.
Recently, Microsoft came back out to retract that notice a bit, and reinforce the notion that bitcoin was still in play as a medium of exchange on Microsoft’s websites.
Microsoft brought out word of clarification, noting that the notice put up on its site was “inaccurate information” that had been “inadvertently posted to a Microsoft site.”
If that weren’t enough, the statement noted that the information was “currently being corrected,” which means those plans to shut down bitcoin support probably never were happening to begin with.
Just to make things more interesting, not only is Microsoft asserting its support for bitcoin, it’s also announced that it’s carrying on with efforts to help develop the blockchain, the underpinnings for bitcoin that have drawn the interest of major banking institutions worldwide.
Plans include a development for blockchain-as-a-service operations, and given that there’s a clear supply of blockchain developers, Microsoft wouldn’t be pulling bitcoin support any time soon.
It was regarded as an unusual move by most anyone who’d heard of it; a partial shutdown for one made little sense, and worse, it was pulling the support after the most expensive part of the project—the initial setup—was concluded.
Even we were stymied; all I could generate at the time for reasons behind it was Microsoft wanted to make some kind of comparison study between sites taking bitcoin and sites not taking bitcoin.
The revelation that the plans to shut down bitcoin support were themselves erroneous makes a lot more sense.
Still, we all know that bitcoin isn’t exactly catching on in any big way, at least for now. As development continues, and more companies step up to accept it as a medium of exchange, we may well be able to correct that point.
For right now, it’s a curiosity, for some an investment property, and one of the biggest sources of potential around.