Dish Network starts accepting Bitcoin payments. Because, reasons

Satellite TV service provider Dish Network has started permitting its customers to pay bills with cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the company announced today.

Dish doesn’t have a wide range of products like online retail stores, nor does its TV service business scale beyond the U.S., which means it’s very likely there won’t be a ton of people rushing to pay with Bitcoin. The move to offer such payments was likely done more from a marketing perspective, as it makes Dish looks far more progressive than cable TV competitors that can’t even manage to offer decent customer service calls, *ahemcomcast*. (Hell, even the press release spends more time plugging a documentary about a couple that tries to exclusively use the cryptocurrency than it does on why Dish decided to start accepting it.)

Still, Dish is hoping to launch an on-demand video/web TV subscription service in the near future, which should be appealing to a more tech savvy crowd that does use Bitcoin.

The company teamed up with Coinbase to process Bitcoin transactions. Right now, Dish customers can only make one-time payments via mydish.com, but automated payments with credit or debit cards are also still an option.