Did Twitch secretly end payments with Bitcoin?

[tyz]

In the past, I have often paid for a subscription to streamers on Twitch (part of Amazon) with Bitcoin. I wanted to do this again today, but I can no longer find the payment option for Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general. I also could not find any announcement about ending this option.
Does anyone know if Twitch has permanently removed the Bitcoin payment option or if this is just temporary?

[Bttzed03]

When was the last time you paid using BTC? I assume you did so about 3 years ago.

There's this 2019 article that says it's been removed - Twitch Removes Support For Crypto Payments

Here's another one - Streaming Service Twitch Removes Crypto Payment Options, Reddit User Reports

edit: my bad.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

I didn't even know that they have that kind of option in the first place. I thought that fiat is the only one available to use as a mode of payment in Twitch. I haven't even seen one donate bitcoin because most of the streamers even the big ones prefer fiat. The only streaming platform that I know that accepts cryptocurrency is dLive.

[SFR10]

In the past, I have often paid for a subscription to streamers on Twitch (part of Amazon) with Bitcoin. I wanted to do this again today, but I can no longer find the payment option for Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general. I also could not find any announcement about ending this option.

I couldn't find anything either but have you checked the "See More Methods" option?

See More Methods will allow you to also choose from a wide range of Xsolla options, including Apple Pay, bank transfer, paysafecard, and digital cryptocurrency depending on your region.

Does anyone know if Twitch has permanently removed the Bitcoin payment option or if this is just temporary?

I wouldn't be surprised if they've silently done ^[add/remove] it again.

There's this 2019 article that says it's been removed -

They brought it back in June Amazon-Owned Twitch Quietly Brings Back Bitcoin Payments
^{- And this one from last year: Twitch Doubles Down on Crypto, Gives Subscribers 10% Discount}

[Potato Chips]

In case it's not supported in your country anymore, an alternative is to buy a gift card, see: Gift cards providers

Remember to do a background check on your chosen provider first as well as read this Twitch Gift Card FAQ as there might be some kind of restriction for your country.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

Nevertheless, it was reinstalled a few months later within 2019:

Twitch introduced a cryptocurrency payment option in 2014 but quietly removed it in Q1 2019; it was brought back in June.

See. https://www.coindesk.com/twitch-doubles-down-crypto-users-discount

As pointed out before, the "More Methods" seems to be the key, if bitcoin is still in play a payment method for subscriptions:

https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/how-to-subscribe?language=en_US

See More Methods will allow you to also choose from a wide range of Xsolla options, including Apple Pay, bank transfer, paysafecard, and digital cryptocurrency depending on your region.

There is no further explanation apparently, as to the regional limitations geographical scope.

[Kakmakr]

There is definitely some regional restrictions in place, because a bunch of my friends in other countries has paid with Bitcoin via Twitch and some of them are having problems now. 

I think they still accept Crypto currencies, but it depends where you stay and what your governments view is on Crypto as a payment option. Some countries only allow Crypto if you use it via a Payment processor, because people behind these payments are not anonymous ..when they pay via Payment processors. 

[ten seventy]

When was the last time you paid using BTC? I assume you did so about 3 years ago.

There's this 2019 article that says it's been removed - Twitch Removes Support For Crypto Payments

Here's another one - Streaming Service Twitch Removes Crypto Payment Options, Reddit User Reports

I was looking for an answer and so there you go. Paying BTC would be great but in these times where btc transaction fees are high then definitely before you send your payments you need to pay a lot or even making it double than the usual payment options due to bitcoin high transaction fees.

[BrewMaster]

I was looking for an answer and so there you go. Paying BTC would be great but in these times where btc transaction fees are high then definitely before you send your payments you need to pay a lot or even making it double than the usual payment options due to bitcoin high transaction fees.

are you talking about now or 2019 when that article was from?
because now the fees are as low as they get sitting at 1 satoshi/vbyte most days specially since bitcoin price has not been moving much for over a months now.

back in 2019 fees weren't that high, the peak was mainly in 2017 when price was shooting up, in 2018 when dumping was happening and then first half of 2021 when price was shooting up again.

[taufik123]

Most likely, someone from the government whispers to them that Bitcoin is bad.

but most likely what you mean is not correct. No one has ever whispered to Twitch that Bitcoin is bad. Twitch even still accepts bitcoin payments and is currently providing a 10% discount for users who make payments with cryptocurrency. Some regions may not provide cryptocurrency payments and that is one of the policies and the OP doesn't get crypto payment options because the regions don't support it. Twitch is one of the streaming platforms that accepts bitcoin or cryptocurrency payments to date.

[tyz]

When was the last time you paid using BTC? I assume you did so about 3 years ago.

There's this 2019 article that says it's been removed - Twitch Removes Support For Crypto Payments

Here's another one - Streaming Service Twitch Removes Crypto Payment Options, Reddit User Reports

A few weeks ago

Your article is completely out of date. There was once a short period in 2019 when bitcoin payments were stopped. However, they were reintroduced at the end of 2019. You sometimes even got discounts on the subscription price if you paid with cryptocurrencies, as can be seen in this Coindesk article from July 2020.
https://www.coindesk.com/twitch-doubles-down-crypto-users-discount

[Nunoluck]

I personally think that paying such thing using cryptocurrency is much easier than any other payment method. I think Twitch should not do that. It will be better if it let people to have many payment method choice. I don't understand why twitch close their source of income from bitcoin, it is just decrease their profit, isn't it?. But if it just for a temporary I think its okay. I still using TRX to buy game items and it's make the developer of the game keep earn income, I can't imagine if there is no cryptocurrency payment option is available, I think I will not buy game item as much as now because of the difficulty and high fee.

[TakeitDo]

There's tons of things Twitch keeps quiet about, like the feature where you can earn bits by watching ads.

[bryant.coleman]

No surprise there. It takes a lot of resources and funds to make a particular form of payment available. And if the volumes are not high enough, then the merchant may decide to remove support. And in the past many of the merchants (Stripe, Steam and Microsoft for example) have taken this step (not due to concerns about security or legality, but because of the low volumes). Now Tesla is an exception here. They removed Bitcoin as a payment option, because Elon Musk is mentally handicapped and couldn't come into terms with the fact that he can't manipulate BTC.

[tyz]

No surprise there. It takes a lot of resources and funds to make a particular form of payment available.

Nope, payment was processed by Bitpay. Therefore, it's not a big deal for Twitch. They have nothing to do with crypto-payments processing at all. Besides, Twitch offers nine different payment options (at least in my country), some of which are likely to be even more complicated than crypto. So that's certainly not the reason.

I was looking for an answer and so there you go. Paying BTC would be great but in these times where btc transaction fees are high then definitely before you send your payments you need to pay a lot or even making it double than the usual payment options due to bitcoin high transaction fees.

You could recently pay not only in BTC, but also in six other currencies including BCH. After the fees for BTC increased so much, I just made the payments in BCH and paid around $0.1-0.15 fees what is acceptable.

[semobo]

Based on the observation from this thread Twitch has been on and off with cryptocurrency payments so there is no surprise they even removed it for now, so if you have no other choice than cashing out in bitcoin then just wait until it adds up but it may take even years.

As someone suggested gift card option is much better since you can convert them into bitcoin if you wanted it to do.

[dkbit98]

I didn't know that Twitch is a part of Amazon but there is your answer why they are not accepting Bitcoin payments anymore.
Big tech is looking on Bitcoin as competition, they don't like it and I don't think it has anything to do with Bitcoin transaction fees that are not so high tight now.
One thing you can do to indirectly pay with bitcoin is to have debit card connected with Bitcoin that you can use for payments like this.

[dificanovi]

In the past, I have often paid for a subscription to streamers on Twitch (part of Amazon) with Bitcoin. I wanted to do this again today, but I can no longer find the payment option for Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general. I also could not find any announcement about ending this option.
Does anyone know if Twitch has permanently removed the Bitcoin payment option or if this is just temporary?

in my opinion, the payment process has been updated and is different from the old way so that the payment menu using bitcoin does not exist, or it could be that Twitch has removed the bitcoin payment menu. I don't understand much about Twitch because I don't use it but I hope that payments on Twitch can use Bitcoin again so that there are more bitcoin users.

[tyz]

in my opinion, the payment process has been updated and is different from the old way so that the payment menu using bitcoin does not exist, or it could be that Twitch has removed the bitcoin payment menu. I don't understand much about Twitch because I don't use it but I hope that payments on Twitch can use Bitcoin again so that there are more bitcoin users.

What do you mean the payment process has been updated? Beside credit cards the following payment options are currently available

Do you mean the crypto payments has been integrated with one of the other available payment options?

I also find it strange that you can't find any news or official announcement about this.

[joniboini]

Looks like there's a lot of confusion around this. It is said that Twitch adds it back and then removes it (and adds it again in 2020). But now some users already reported that they no longer see Bitpay[1] on the payment option (previously used to process their crypto tx). So I guess it's now gone again?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/oiv7c8/where_is_bitpay/

[Altcoinsintel]

Since we all agree that Bitcoin will not be used for payments of everyday transactions what is the reason to discuss about it?
Maybe some of you haven't realized it yet that Bitcoin shoots for digital gold, not for digital payments. Some of you are in this for 5-6 years, haven't you figured this out already?

[tyz]

Since we all agree that Bitcoin will not be used for payments of everyday transactions what is the reason to discuss about it?
Maybe some of you haven't realized it yet that Bitcoin shoots for digital gold, not for digital payments. Some of you are in this for 5-6 years, haven't you figured this out already?

It is more about the reason why they secretly ended the payment with Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. I agree with you that Bitcoin is not suitable to pay an amout of $5, as currently you have to pay 20-30% of it in fees if you want the transaction to arrive on time. Whereas the fees for an annual subscription of $60 would then be acceptable again for some.
But we are also talking about other cryptocurrencies that have been accepted, and where you have only paid a few cents in fees.