Microsoft has resumed the support for Bitcoin as payment method for its products.
The tech giant had temporarily stopped accepting Bitcoins, citing instability in the cryptocurrency. Microsoft had started Bitcoin payment acceptance in 2014, but has halted it thrice since then.
Microsoft told news.com.au on Wednesday that it had stopped Bitcoin support, but has restored it now.
“We’ve restored bitcoin as a payment option in our store after working with our provider to ensure lower bitcoin amounts would be redeemable by customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson told news.com.au.
In December 2017, digital video game store Steam too denied support for Bitcoin because of high fees and volatility. It was in December that Bitcoin saw the highest price (around $20000), and then fell to just $11000 within a few days. The fluctuation is reported to have caused a loss of nearly $200 million to the cryptocurrency market.
In January 2017, the Bitcoin was valued at just $1000, and its value in January 2018 is close to $15000. The Bitcoin investors are increasing day by day, and the space in each block is surpassing the average fees. It is causing longer times for users to process the transactions.
The rapid rise in the Bitcoin fees and longer times taken during the transactions, have made the things a little difficult for users to carry out e-commerce transaction using Bitcoin. Currently, Bitcoin network can process only four transactions per second.
“Bitcoin users can choose to add an optional fee to a transaction. The higher the fee, the more likely the transaction will be accepted by the miners— the computers which continually verify and add to the blockchain — and so make it into the next ‘block’,” suggested news.com.au.
