BitPay Adopts SegWit For Cheaper Bitcoin Transactions
Cryptocurrency payments processor BitPay is now supporting segregated witness (SegWit) transactions, three years after the firm opposed the update in favor of an alternative solution SegWit2x.
According to CoinDesk, BitPay regularly processes more than $1 billion in yearly payments, and in April 2020 it processed 100,718 payments, 91.93% of which were bitcoin transactions. BitPay’s director of product Sean Rolland revealed now was a “good time” to adopt SegWit based on merchant feedback.
A blog post reportedly shared with CoinDesk reads:
“Support for SegWit is currently an optional feature for Bitcoin wallets in the BitPay App. Later this year, as part of a phased rollout plan, support for SegWit will be a default for all Bitcoin wallets. In addition later this year, SegWit will be implemented for invoice payments.”
SegWit is a scaling solution that, in essence, frees up block space without increasing block sizes. Transactions using it are estimated to save up to 30%, per BitPay’s blog post.
