Four years after terminating support for Bitcoin (BTC), Irish-American financial services, Stripe Inc., has decided to revive access to the original cryptocurrency for its users.
On Tuesday, OpenNode revealed to have entered into a partnership with Stripe, in order to create an application to facilitate Bitcoin (BTC) payments for Stripe’s clients.
Stripe clients will be able to convert incoming payments and any balance amount into Bitcoin by using the app. This service will be available as part of a public beta test of Stripe’s new app marketplace, which is set to launch in the coming weeks. To settle payments, OpenNode leverages the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which seeks to make BTC transactions quicker and cheaper.
Stripe announced a stablecoin payment option through its Stripe Connect service for authors on Twitter in April. The OpenNode app is another step forward in the crypto arena for the company. Seeing competitors make headway in the space, Stripe resurrected its cryptocurrency initiatives.
Stripe was an early adopter of Bitcoin payments, but the firm stopped supporting it in 2018, claiming long transaction times, increased costs, and a lack of client enthusiasm as reasons for the move. However, with Bitcoin Lightning, these problems have been all but tackled. It has vastly reduced the time taken and costs of Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.
With its millions of users, Stripe’s revived interest in Bitcoin can have a far-reaching impact on the crypto, and further its usage. Specially since the recent market crash has left many investors in the red.
Bitcoin saw a plummet from around $45k at the beginning of April 2022, to $29,404.21 at press time. Additionally, BTC is 57.4% below its all-time high of $69,044.77, which it attained in November of 2021.
Crypto analyst Altcoin Sherpa, however, expects Bitcoin will rise over the next few weeks. According to the analyst, BTC may hit anywhere between $35,000 and $40,000 in the coming weeks.