Amazon's Twitch Ditches Bitcoin Payments, Lack of Demand?

Tv, a live video streaming platform owned by Amazon, has quietly removed Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as payment methods for subscriptions.

The news has many members of the crypto-community wondering whether cryptocurrencies, as a payment method, are experiencing negative adoption or if it was an isolated move from Twitch.

Tv, has decided to ditch Bitcoin payment methods and remove support for cryptocurrencies.

While the Amazon-owned platform didn't announce or explain its decision, many Twitch users believe that the move was the company's response to the lack of demand.

The company announced the integration with cryptocurrency payments back in January 2018, adding Bitcoin to the long list of available payment options, which included Apple Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and even Coinbase.

The company's decision to implement cryptocurrency payments was regarded as a major move last year, as it meant that millions of users would be exposed to digital coins.

As many Redditors pointed out, very few Twitch users and streamers were actually aware that they were able to pay and accept donations in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin's high transaction costs and slow network speed make it one of the least desirable day-to-day payment method, unlike other smaller digital coins such as Dash or Ripple's XRP. Last January, Microsoft also suspended Bitcoin payments on its online store, citing "Instability" as the reason behind the move.

Steam, an online gaming platform, was among the first to adopt crypto payments but dropped its Bitcoin feature during the crypto boom of 2017.

While Twitch is hardly the first company to add and then remove crypto payments, the move could have a much wider impact on its user base than its competitors did.