Coinbase discontinues support for Bitcoin on Coinbase Commerce – Digital Transformation News
Coinbase has withdrawn backing for native Bitcoin (BTC), along with additional UTXO tokens, from Coinbase Commerce, a merchant-based payment platform, as stated by Cointelegraph.
According to Cointelegraph, the development was confirmed by Lauren Dowling, head of product, Coinbase. From what it’s understood, Dowling stated that the company “made the difficult decision to remove native Bitcoin & other UTXO support” from Coinbase Commerce, on account of drawbacks related to distributing recent updates on its BTC-oriented EVM payment protocol.
“The new Commerce product enforces the details of each payment onchain, supports hundreds of assets (native and ERC-20s) […] automatically converts payments to USDC onchain at a guaranteed rate to merchants. Delivering these same capabilities on the Bitcoin blockchain without smart contracts and stablecoins was challenging & we therefore made the difficult decision to remove native Bitcoin & other UTXO support,” Dowling mentioned.
Based on Cointelegraph’s data, customers using Coinbase Commerce will continue to be able to make BTC usage provided that they have a Coinbase account, as highlighted by Brian Armstrong, CEO, Coinbase. It’s believed that Coinbase is looking to complete Lightning Network’s incorporation. “Hopefully there are opportunities to make commerce payments with Lightning in the future,” Armstrong said.
Moreover, Cointelegraph noted that the call for discarding BTC resulted in a community-wide backlash on social media, which resulted in customers implying how the elimination will impact BTC adoption. “Is it assumed every customer is in the US and able to open a Coinbase account and/or that every customer would want a Coinbase account? That’s like dictating that every customer has to be a Bank of America customer in order for merchants who simply bank with BofA to accept payments,” a pseudonymous user emphasised.
(With insights from Cointelegraph)
