Ending Bitcoin support

: by Jim Stone; in General News; on 12 September 2018; Hits: 4896

We’ve long been excited about the possibilities of cryptocurrencies and the experimentation and innovation that’s come with them. In 2017, we became the first inspection company to accept Bitcoin payments.

Our hope was that Bitcoin could become a universal, decentralized substrate for online transactions and help our customers enable buyers in places that had less credit card penetration or use cases where credit card fees were prohibitive.

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. This has led to Bitcoin becoming less 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 almost as expensive as bank wires.

Therefore, starting today, we are discontinuing support for Bitcoin payments.