Author – Terri Wilson
Tech giant MICROSOFT on 10th Jan resumed accepting bitcoin as a payment option to its products after temporarily halting it last week due to the instability of BTC and high transaction fees. Microsoft has allowed users to pay for goods and services using the Bitcoin since 2014 and over the years the tech giant stopped temporarily in 2015 and in 2016.
The last week halt was first reported by bleeping computers claiming that the BTC was “unstable currency”. Later on, a Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the suspension and said the service was restored.
She said: “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.”
Last year, Steam made a similar decision as the main reason remains the volatility and high transaction fees of the Bitcoin. The fees have further commented that the fees have risen from some few cents to $20 plus at the moment, making it unfavorable for micro-transactions.
The company statement read:
“Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of bitcoin itself drops dramatically.”
The ban news comes as BTC as had a tough week as it tries to keep up with the major regulations in South Korea, Malaysia, and The North American Bitcoin Conference event and frequent price swings. In the past weeks, the BTC has managed a new high of $17,100 and has dipped to a low of around $9500.
Other cryptocurrencies such as ETH and BCH and XRP has pushed for lower fees on their networks as the market dominance of Bitcoin dip from a high of 86% a year ago to 36% currently. As the South Korean ban incident passes the bitcoin seem to gain more traction as more tech companies start to adopt it or the Blockchain technology.
