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As Bitcoin continues to become less useful for payments given increasing confirmation times and processing costs (tens of dollars per transaction), Stripe has decided to discontinue BTC payments by April 23, 2018. The payment processing company remains bullish on cyrpto overall and will continue to look at other alternatives such as Ethereum, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin.
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.
