Stripe Pulling Out of Bitcoin
Bitcoin has not exactly had a great run lately. First there were the criminals getting in on the action, then the governments started to hysterically shriek “regulation” at the top of their lungs, and then there was the news that criminals were getting out of the action just to drive the nail in the coffin. Or maybe not the final nail, as Stripe recently announced it was shutting down its bitcoin integration and encouraging other cryptocurrencies instead.
Back in 2015, Stripe integrated bitcoin into its operations, allowing Stripe merchants to become part of the comparative handful that accept bitcoin as payment. It was supposed to be the start of something great, especially for many bitcoin investors who thought that this was the beginning of a truly mainstream bitcoin.
However, Stripe, at last report, spotted many of the same problems that criminals were seeing with bitcoin, and reached the same conclusion: it’s not worth having. Problems like high transaction fees, slow transaction confirmations, and volatility so marked that a price can change in seconds got Stripe thinking twice about its overall acceptance plan. Stripe doesn’t think poorly of bitcoin as an asset, or as an investment property, but as a payment medium, it just doesn’t have the goods to keep going.
Stripe is, in turn, suggesting alternate cryptocurrency instead, particularly OmiseGO and Ethereum. It’s also considering adding support for Stellar—which it provided seed funding for back when—as well as other potential currencies down the line from Litecoin to even Bitcoin Cash. However, there’s no word about when any of those will actually be built into Stripe the way bitcoin is, for now, and bitcoin may not be out forever at last report.
All of this, of course, is a problem for bitcoin. Without utility, there could be some real trouble going forward in terms of people getting hands on bitcoin. There is still value in the currency for its anonymity and its blockchain advancement, but the notion that bitcoin could reach projected levels of anything above its previous $20,000 high are now something of a forlorn hope.
It’s possible that bitcoin could recover—I own a bit of it myself—but even “hang on for dear life” is starting to look like a philosophy that will just have users hanging on to a falling knife.