Payment Processor Stripe officially announced on Tuesday that they are to phase-out support for Bitcoin in April. This move comes as a bit of a shock to some in the crypto community, as Lightning Network, a major improvement to Bitcoin's system is on the main network and reports of it's success are spreading throughout the community.
So questions remain as to what is going on here. Multiple media outlets, from Business Insider to Coindesk are reporting this news in similar fashion. Of course the headline grabs attention, but it's hard to think that Stripe is giving up on Bitcoin long-term. That is why I urge people to actually read the official blog post from Stripe Product Manager, Tom Karlo.
https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support
Most everybody acknowledges the issues with Bitcoin right now but information that is being shared from developers and those that are currently running lightning nodes, a tenet of the lightning network, are optimistic about Bitcoin. Which leads me to another point. Tom Karlo points to other projects he is keen on, like Stellar, Litecoin, and even Bitcoin Cash, which is why it's easy to think maybe they are taking one eye off of Bitcoin as these other projects appear at the moment to be more viable.
We at Phuture Gains will continue to follow this story.