Coinbase Officially Drops Native BTC Payments from Merchants’ Platform

Coinbase, the largest digital asset trading platform in the United States by trading volume, has officially dropped support for native Bitcoin (BTC) and other UTXO coins from its payment platform for merchants, Coinbase Commerce.

On the other hand, as reported earlier by TheCoinRise, the exchange surpassed analyst expectations with its fourth-quarter financial results, reporting a revenue of $953.8 million. The company witnessed a 41% surge in income as compared to the previous quarter and a significant 50% increase compared to the same period the previous year. 

Coinbase Drops Native BTC Payments

It is important to note that Coinbase officially removed support for native Bitcoin and other UTXO coins from its merchants’ platform, and the decision was confirmed by the crypto exchange’s head of product, Lauren Dowling.

Dowling confirmed that the company “made the difficult decision to remove native Bitcoin and other UTXO support” from Coinbase Commerce on February 18 via social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter). 

Facing Difficulties

Dowling stated that Coinbase has been facing difficulties in delivering recent updates on its EVM payment protocol for Bitcoin. 

“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 added.

Coinbase Accounts Can Still Use BTC

According to Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, people buying products via the merchants’ platform will still be able to use Bitcoin if they have an account with the exchange. He also confirmed that the exchange is currently in the process of integrating into the Lightning Network digital asset trading platform.

“Hopefully there are opportunities to make commerce payments with Lightning in the future,” commented Armstrong, while adding: 

“Zooming out—we think paying for stuff online with crypto won’t really go mainstream until we get off layer 1 and reduce transaction fees and confirmation times, so we’re trying to accelerate the move toward that world.”

New Services

As reported earlier by TheCoinRise, the crypto exchange rolled out an exciting enhancement to its Coinbase Advanced platform, a fee upgrade program tailored for high-volume traders. The new service is focused on catering to the needs of professional traders. 

The exchange has also been on an expansion spree, recently partnering with Yellow Card, a digital asset exchange operating in Africa.