Online classifieds and community website Gumtree takes severe action against bitcoin-related content after a Gumtree user had his advertisement suspended due to Bitcoin payments not being allowed.

Although Gumtree’s Terms of Service does not mention Bitcoin-related sales as being illegal to accept, the platform prevented one user’s advertisement, as he was trying to sell a book for Bitcoin. Like Gumtree, eBay is another platform that does not allow Bitcoin payments.

Gumtree customer representative, Pierre stated that, “We only allow real money and this is the reason why bitcoin payments are not allowed.” Gumtree seems to pretend Bitcoin is an illegal payment method although anyone can post an ad to sell just about everything in the platform.

The removal mail of this ad which was posted on reddit.com followed numerous comments from customers expressing their similar experience with Gumtree. The company has previously removed ads and the issues were rectified after a lot of back-and-forth communication, after which the company seemed to incline Bitcoin payments are legal. But in the recent ad removal, it is clear that the company does not want to associate with cryptocurrency.

Although Gumtree and few other online platforms ban bitcoin payments, there are solutions where online marketplaces like OpenBazaar accept bitcoin payments and let anyone in the world sell anything they like.