Humble Bundle ceases Bitcoin payments for Humble Jumbo Bundle 6

Humble Bundle, the popular video game and ebook retailer has ceased Bitcoin payments for its monthly bundle, starting with this month’s ‘Humble Jumbo Bundle 6’. It is not yet clear what the reasoning behind this decision was.

Technical issues

Humble Bundle’s Twitter support account, @humblesupport, tweeted that they were experiencing issues with Bitcoin payments on the 2nd March:

Our bitcoin (@coinbase) integration is currently experiencing issues! We will hopefully have a fix soon, but until then it is disabled. — Humble Support Ninja (@humblesupport) March 3, 2016

When asked by Twitter user, @iankremer on March 3rd, if the support account would post again when they had fixed the issue, Humble Bundle responded in the affirmative:

@iankremer @coinbase Absolutely! — Humble Support Ninja (@humblesupport) March 3, 2016

An amendment to the footer on the bundle’s page then appeared soon after, saying, “Bitcoin payments have been disabled for the Humble Jumbo Bundle 6.”

Distribution issues

However, a post on Reddit discussing the topic suggested that technical issues with Coinbase may not be the reason behind suspending Bitcoin payments.

A comment from Reddit user, /u/coinbase-john, a Coinbase support agent, cryptically suggested this may be the case:

“The issue referenced in that tweet was fixed the next day; that is not why they have disabled bitcoin payments. - John, Coinbase Support”

Another Reddit user, /u/dooglus, said:

“I’ve asked them about this before and they told me it’s to do with licensing. Accepting Bitcoin means they can’t limit distribution by country which some of their content providers demand.”

Cointelegraph approached Humble Bundle for comment, but has yet to receive a response. This article will be updated if and when they reply.