Coinbase Commerce Delisting of DOGE and LTC; What's Behind Move?

Mishaboar, a prominent Dogecoin community member, has reacted to Coinbase Commerce's decision to no longer support native Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Litecoin payments.

Lauren Dowling, Coinbase Commerce's product lead, shared an important clarification over the weekend on some changes to Coinbase Commerce and the reasons for it.

Coinbase Payments no longer supports native #Bitcoin, #Dogecoin, #Litecoin payments because it was "too challenging" without smart contracts. Only users with a Coinbase account will be able to pay using UTXO-based coins. Coinbase payments is Coinbase's payment gateway which… https://t.co/xHmE63YtDF

— Mishaboar (@mishaboar) February 19, 2024

Dowling claims that in response to consumer demand, an open on-chain payments protocol based on smart contracts and other EVM technologies was created, free of the operational and financial burdens of the old system.

The new Commerce product enforces the details of each payment on-chain, supports hundreds of assets (native and ERC-20s) across Base, Polygon and Ethereum, and automatically converts payments to USDC on-chain.

Customers can pay using any self-custody EVM wallet, native asset or ERC-20 tokens (including wrapped Bitcoin) on Ethereum L2. Customers can also pay with any asset in their Coinbase account (including Bitcoin, Litecoin and Doge).

Dowling said that implementing these same capabilities on the Bitcoin blockchain without smart contracts and stablecoins was impossible; thus, Coinbase made the difficult decision to remove native Bitcoin and other UTXO support.

Coinbase Commerce's decision to remove native Bitcoin, Dogecoin and other UTXO support has sparked criticism and disappointment in the crypto community, especially among fans and holders of these coins. Along these lines, Mishaboar expressed his displeasure over this on X.

In positive news, Dogecoin is gearing up for its next big upgrade toward the end of February. Dogecoin Core 1.14.7, which contains fixes and useful updates, is scheduled for Feb. 27.

In a February blog post, the Dogecoin Foundation highlighted its focus for 2024, which includes enhancing existing projects, introducing new initiatives like DogeBox, and expanding its team and community engagement.