Discount gift card supplier BitCart

has taken the unusual step of abandoning Bitcoin in favor of Dash payment, with demand “soaring” as a result.

BitCart, an Irish startup competing with the likes of Gyft, now only offers customers the option of paying for their Amazon gift cards with Dash. The cards, purchased at a discount, effectively give holders a 15 percent saving on Amazon products. The scheme will shortly expand to include hotels.com. “From a merchant’s point of view, bitcoin is extremely problematic,” CEO Graham de Barra said in a press release about the move.

“Bitcoin as a method of payment on BitCart is simply not sustainable and it's a nightmare from a merchant point of view; every twenty or so transactions the platform would stop working and we would have to reintegrate the API.” Dash has meanwhile managed to keep its value in the face of rising and falling altcoin markets, while Bitcoin’s network woes are compounded by an influx of new users. “Since we integrated Dash six weeks ago, we haven't had a single problem. Dash is so easy to use from both a consumer and merchant perspective and since we disabled bitcoin, demand for BitCart has gone through the roof,” de Barra continued.