Reddit unplugs bitcoin payments
Reddit, one of bitcoin's first adopters, is no longer accepting payments in the digital currency.
A favored hangout for fans of cryptocurrencies, the social media platform in recent days disengaged the option to use bitcoin to purchase a premium membership due to snags in the system and because of a decision by Coinbase, a digital-assets exchange, to discontinue its merchant product in favor of a new platform.
Reddit users began commenting on Friday that the only payment options for the membership program were limited to credit cards and PayPal, without the previous choice of bitcoin.
Asked for confirmation, Reddit spokesperson Leigh Ann Benicewicz in an email directed CBS MoneyWatch to a comment from a Reddit administrator addressing the change.
"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," wrote a Reddit board administrator with the user name emoney04.
"We're going to take a look at demand and watch the progression of Coinbase Commerce before making a decision on whether to reenable," the Reddit administrator also wrote.
Coinbase plans to release a service, called Coinbase Commerce, for merchants to take bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum and litecoin payments and deposit them in their own digital wallet, the San Francisco company said in a blog post last month.
Partnering with Coinbase, Reddit began taking bitcoin payments in its now defunct merchandise store RedditMarket, in 2015.
Merchants that accept cryptocurrencies include Shopify (SHOP), Overstock (OSTK), Expedia (EXPE) and Microsoft (MSFT).