Payment processor Stripe will no longer support bitcoin payments on its platform, citing the cryptocurrency’s price volatility as a factor making it an unsuitable form of payment.

Stripe Product Manager Tom Karlo said in a company blog post yesterday:

Over the past year or two, as block size limits have been reached, Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange. Given the overall success that the Bitcoin community has achieved, it’s hard to quibble with the decisions that have been made along the way. (And we’re certainly happy to see any novel, ambitious project do so well.)

This has led to Bitcoin becoming less useful for payments, however. Transaction confirmation times have risen substantially; this, in turn, has led to an increase in the failure rate of transactions denominated in fiat currencies. (By the time the transaction is confirmed, fluctuations in Bitcoin price mean that it’s for the “wrong” amount.) Furthermore, fees have risen a great deal. For a regular Bitcoin transaction, a fee of tens of U.S. dollars is common, making Bitcoin transactions about as expensive as bank wires.

Over the past month, the price of bitcoin has been steadily decreasing below its all-time high of over $17K. Today, the cryptocurrency is trading at $11,281.51, up 9.9% as of 9.30 AM ET, according to Coinbase.

Read more at Stripe and Finextra.

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