ambcrypto.com
On May 23, AT&T announced that they will be accepting Bitcoin as a payment medium through Bitpay. This opened the door to massive mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, enabling people to spend their Bitcoin [BTC] for daily activities. According to The Block, Bitpay will be processing these transactions and will provide AT&T with cash for the same.
Bitcoin [BTC] proponent, Anthony Pompliano AKA Pomp, spread this news on his Twitter handle where he wrote:
“AT&T just announced that they will now accept Bitcoin for bill payments. There are only 21 million. Everyone is trying to accumulate Bitcoin”
While many users suspected this as a set up for 2020, one Twitter user, @Ragnarly was of the view that AT&T might be accumulating fiat instead of BTC. They added:
“AT&T is not trying to accumulate bitcoin. They’re accumulating fiat, using the bitcoin-hostile payment processor BitPay, who, with these profits, can continue existing as a cancer on BTC. Sorry Pomp, this is a bad take.”
Pomp was quick to ask the user about his take on Bitpay being “bitcoin hostile”, to which the user replied that Bitpay’s support of SegWit2x and “spreading lies” led to an increased network fee for BTC, while “pushing BCash [Bitcoin Cash], using BIP-70, SegWit feet dragging & more”.
The CSO of Blockstream, Samson Mow also joined the conversation supporting the Twitter user by saying:
“They’ve tried to externalize their business costs onto the #Bitcoin network 4 or 5 times by supporting hostile forks.”