Microsoft announced back in 2014 that it would start accepting BitCoins in its online store.

Eric Lockard, corporate vice president of Universal Store at Microsoft said at the time: “For us, this is about giving people options and helping them do more on their devices and in the cloud. The use of digital currencies such as bitcoin, while not yet mainstream, is growing beyond the early enthusiasts. We expect this growth to continue and allowing people to use bitcoin to purchase our products and services now allows us to be at the front edge of that trend.”

Lockard looks to have been wrong.

Recently, a pop up has occurred on the store page saying: “Microsoft Store doesn't accept Bitcoin.”

Microsoft was using Bitpay as its go between for the exchanges and it appears nothing has happened to warrant a turn around. Limited demand seems a more likely explanation.

For now, however, Redmond's retail experiment with cryptocurrency has ended, heaping a little more misery on Bitcoin after recent reports that transactions in the scrip are taking as much as a dozen hours to settle.

Russia has announced that it will start jailing anyone using the cryptocurrency. Local newswire Interfax reports a new Ministry of Finance proposal to make issuing Bitcoin punishable with seven years inside.

Source: The Register