Crypto Community Hub Reddit Disables Bitcoin Payments

(Bloomberg) -- Early Bitcoin adopter Reddit stopped accepting payments with the largest digital currency.

The social media platform, a popular gathering spot for crypto enthusiasts, last week disabled the option to pay for its premium membership with Bitcoin as it watches how Coinbase Inc.'s Coinbase Commerce platform develops and after there were glitches in Reddit's system, according to a Reddit board administrator with the user name emoney04.

“Yup that's right. The upcoming Coinbase change, combined with some bugs around the Bitcoin payment option that were affecting purchases for certain users, led us to remove Bitcoin as a payment option,” emoney04 wrote.

The move suggests that some merchants may disable Bitcoin payments before deciding whether to switch to Coinbase's service. It also highlights how Bitcoin continues to struggle to gain mass adoption for payments, as even one of the first adopters bails.

Coinbase Commerce will allow merchants to accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin payments. Commerce platform Shopify, which was already accepting Bitcoin, is one of the first to start using the service, Coinbase said last month. Other merchants taking cryptocurrencies are Overstock.com Inc., Expedia Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

The board administrator said Reddit will also watch demand for Bitcoin payments before deciding whether to re-enable the service.

Reddit started accepting Bitcoin payments for its Reddit Gold membership in 2013 through a partnership with Coinbase.

To contact the reporter on this story: Camila Russo in New York at crusso15@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael P. Regan at mregan12@bloomberg.net, Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Andrew Dunn

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