Microsoft has stopped accepting Bitcoin payments

Bitcoin may be hundreds of times more valuable than the US Dollar, but that doesn’t mean much when most companies don’t accept the digital currency. That’s why it was such a big deal that a major company like Microsoft decided to start accepting Bitcoin payments for digital content on Windows and the Xbox back in December of 2014, but for reasons that aren’t currently known, the company has reversed that decision. On Sunday, Microsoft quietly stopped accepting Bitcoin through the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 devices.

Much was made of Microsoft’s move two years ago to start accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for purchasing content from its online store. The situation has, however, quietly changed, as the computer giant has recently added a note to its website revealing it’s no longer accepting the cryptocurrency in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 devices. “You can no longer redeem Bitcoin into your Microsoft account,” the message says, though adds that existing balances in user accounts “will still be available for purchases from Microsoft Store, but can’t be refunded.” So to be clear, any funds in your account now are good to use, but forget trying to make any new deposits into your account using Bitcoin. It’s not known why the computer giant has had a change of heart over the digital currency, though software database and tech news site Softpedia, which spotted the change, suggested the number of Bitcoin-based transactions with Microsoft remained small over the last two years. As a result, the computer company “has no reason to continue keeping it as a supported digital currency.”