By Daniel Shane January 24, 2018: 4:59 AM ET

An early cheerleader for bitcoin has announced it's pulling the plug on the digital currency.

Leading online payments company Stripe said it will stop processing bitcoin transactions in April.

Stripe, which works with more than 100,000 businesses around the world, said it made the decision because huge volatility in bitcoin's price has made it pretty impractical for making and receiving payments.

"Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange," Stripe executive Tom Karlo wrote in a company blog post Tuesday.

Related: What is bitcoin?

Stripe's withdrawal of support comes on the back of bitcoin's wild ride over the last year or so.

Over the course of 2017, its price surged from under $1,000 to more than $19,000 at one point. It's plunged back to around $10,000 during tumultuous trading this month.



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