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The payment service, Stripe, has ended its support for Bitcoin due to rising transaction fees and long confirmation times. Particularly the latter contribute to failed transfers. So Bitcoin is over as an experiment, and more are realizing that. However, the expectation is that some other cryptocurrency will become widely used, eventually.
Therefore, starting today, we are winding down support for Bitcoin payments. Over the next three months we will work with affected Stripe users to ensure a smooth transition before we stop processing Bitcoin transactions on April 23, 2018.
Despite this, we remain very optimistic about cryptocurrencies overall. There are a lot of efforts that we view as promising and that we can certainly imagine enabling support for in the future.
[ TMB Note: Yes, this will absolutely break our ability to accept BitCoin. Again. Which is fine this time as BitCoin transaction fees are now as high as the minimum price for a year's subscription. If you have a preferred alternative that we can accept without actually touching cryptocurrency, drop the info in a comment. ]
(Score: 2) by arcz on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:50AM (20 children)
The fact people are willing to pay $30/transaction shows that bitcoin is here to stay. Unfortunately it's priced out micropayments, for now. Lightning might help.
Another reason bitcoin wont die: As people abandon bitcoin there are less transactions, thus less transaction fees, thus more people will use bitcoin.
Basically bitcoin's value wont go up much ( because that'd cause transaction fees to go up, making people not want to use bitcoin) and also by the same token wont go down. 10-15k price here to stay? Until Lightning Network anyway.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:09AM (9 children)
What are people buying where a $30 transaction fee doesn't matter? Illicit drugs/weapons? Or just speculating on the value of Bitcoin going up?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:21AM (7 children)
Isn't this what it is mostly for? Anyone here that pays for their groceries with bitcoins? Or anything "normal" (whatever that is but lets assume its not drugs, guns, sex or anything illicit)? So it still seems that it is mostly about illicit activities, items and then for speculative purposes and if you think that something is going to increase $1000 over night then $30 isn't to much of an issue.
That said another reason is probably the wild swings in value, it's really annoying if you want to sell (or buy) things if the price value can change wildly up or down from day to day or hour to hour. Yes that can happen to normal currency to but it doesn't seem to have the wild swings associated with bitcoins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 25 2018, @02:46AM (5 children)
I was going to say SN subscriptions aren't illicit but then I thought better of it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Thursday January 25 2018, @02:56AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:11PM
Agreed. That private Caribbean island ain't gonna buy itself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:56PM (2 children)
Also, fuck Earth. All it ever did was keep me down.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @10:00PM (1 child)
Actually it keeps you up, by hey physics is a pretty tough subject!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:01PM
Its gravity well of 11.2 km/s begs to differ.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @05:49PM
i pay my utility bills, gas and groceries with bitcoin (via the shift card), or sometimes just part of it. I buy stuff on newegg with BTC directly. i haven't seen $30 transaction fees. i want to say my last one was $7-10? i don't care about that because the BTC came from mined monero and i want people to accept crypto currency so i buy stuff from them with it. i've never bought anything naughty with cryptocurrency at all. I could get anything i wanted with cash anyways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:53PM
Ransomware ransom payments.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tftp on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:31AM (1 child)
There are high fixed costs [theguardian.com] for running the system:
Who is going to pay for all this? Answer: the last remaining bitcoiners. Even Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are not rich enough to pay for the service. It is already obvious that the BTC cannot compete with very efficient and infinitely scalable banking services. Yes, it remains viable in poor countries - but come on, the transfer may cost more than their monthly income! BTC today is a currency only for rich speculators and criminals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @04:40PM
Isn't that only because the value of bitcoin is high so there are a lot of miners? If value falls, number of miners drops, so does the block difficulty, and therefore the cost of running the network. If all of the miners stopped overnight, you could run the entire network from a single desktop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:48AM (3 children)
For any one that still reads Cringely, today's column is about Bitcoin, here is a cutting from the middle of the column:
https://www.cringely.com/2018/01/24/prediction-4-bitcoin-crashes-booms-crashes-booms-2018-traders-figure-not-currency/ [cringely.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:47AM
That trade (though not to the degree of anonymity that Bitcoin allows for) is the primary purpose of a currency. Even a hyperinflating currency has some ability to do that.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 25 2018, @06:19AM
If Cringely doesn't even know the lingo, then his arguments probably don't hodl much water.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @07:11AM
Except they are not. Derivatives are derivatives *of* something, like some stock price or price of hogs. Bitcoin is not a derivative. It's even worse than VIX, as that is a measure of *something*. Bitcoin is just made up waste of time.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday January 25 2018, @06:01AM (3 children)
Have you not noticed that this is a "people are not willing to pay $30/transaction" story?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @10:44AM (2 children)
If nobody were willing to pay $30/transaction, the transaction price would not be at $30.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:15PM (1 child)
If your money never leaves an exchange wallet, no actual trades need take place except on paper. Speculation, even tiny amounts of speculation, are still quite possible without incurring the currently huge fees.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:31PM
Here you go [bitbonkers.com]