Last night, some rumors began circulating which claimed that Uber was planning to announce that it’ll now be accepting Bitcoin payments. These rumors came after a Reddit user posted a cryptic interaction with one of Uber’s representatives and, as I’m sure you can imagine, crytocurrency enthusiast everywhere started getting excited. Unfortunately, the company came forward earlier today to tell us flatly that Uber will NOT be accepting Bitcoin anytime soon.
Uber has denied that it is currently integrating bitcoin as a payment option for its on-demand mobile ride-sharing services. Suspicions regarding a potential announcement first began to circulate on social media yesterday after a user posted a cryptic interaction with one of the company’s help desk representatives to Reddit. The text of the message suggested that Uber was “currently making bitcoin work” for the service, but offered few supporting details. However, a representative for Uber indicated that such assertions were unwarranted, telling CoinDesk flatly: “This story isn’t true.” Speculation that the company could move to accept bitcoin has emerged periodically from the bitcoin community, including in the weeks preceding the announcement that mobile payments firm Braintree would integrate a bitcoin payments option. In a further connection between the technology and the company, Uber SVP Emil Michael was named as investor in micropayments startup Neucoin’s $1.25m angel round in February.
