Twitch quietly brings back crypto payment option

It wasn’t too long ago that the streaming platform Twitch decided to remove the option to pay for content using cryptocurrencies after including it a year ago. The move was silently made, with no announcement by Twitch or its parent company, Amazon. Now, the option has been added back, once again absent any announcement by either entity.

According to a report by Cointelegraph Brazil, Bitcoin Core (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are once again listed as forms of payment on Twitch. The platform had, in March, done away with including BitPay as a payment option, but the crypto payment processor is back in the list of payment options, although well hidden.

In order to make a payment with crypto, users have to log in, select the “most methods” button, choose a subscription level, click on “continue” and then “show more methods” in order to find the BitPay option. It’s almost as convoluted as the other option, having a streamer include a crypto wallet address on his or her channel in order to allow a viewer to send tips directly from one wallet to another.

The timing of the reappearance of BitPay is interesting. It comes on the heels of the largest crypto bull run in the past 18 months. As digital currency prices are settling, it will be interesting to see if Twitch decides to, once again, remove the option in the near future.

Twitch began its love/hate, on-again/off-again relationship with crypto back in 2014. It was then that it began accepting BTC after joining the Xsollar payment network. Xsolla then removed BTC as a payment option, leaving the streaming platform incapable of accepting crypto transactions. The capability returned in 2016 when Coinbase became a payment processor for Twitch before removing the option ahead of the migration to BitPay.

When BitPay was removed this past March, for no apparent reason, crypto enthusiasts, as well as streamers, once again found themselves without their favorite payment option. As the current bull run settles down, it will be interesting to see if Twitch decides to leave a good thing alone, or if it, once again, pulls the plug on crypto payments.