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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#191

Post by ryanlol »

mbmott wrote: post #128
Fogest wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't have to have valid data on your steam account?

As far as I know you can't make a purchase without having valid payment data. There might be a work around, but probably not via Bitcoin payments. Bitpay is definitely subject to KYC / AML compliance.

> As far as I know you can't make a purchase without having valid payment data.

What is "valid payment data"? How do they validate this data?

>Bitpay is definitely subject to KYC / AML compliance.

Why is that relevant?

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#192

Post by kentt »

Grue3 wrote: post #20
StavrosK wrote: post #12

I was really surprised that the announcement that Steam may support Bitcoin made waves a while ago, yet the announcement that it actually does did not. I used it to buy a (horrible) game last night, and it worked beautifully. Contrast with PayPal, with which Steam is always confused about where I am and whether it should charge me in GBP or EUR. I'm never not using Bitcoin again.

What about refunds? With Paypal you know you're getting the same amount back, in the same currency, as if you haven't bought anything at all. Given the fluctuating nature of Bitcoin, surely that's not possible?

There is the same sort of issue with any foreign currency. As a Canadian, I'm often buying things with USD. I don't expect to covered for fluctuations in the CAD/USD if I'm refunded.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#193

Post by belorn »

joosters wrote: post #23

So you buy bitcoins with dollars, Bitpay exchanges the bitcoins back into dollars, and then they hand the dollars over to Steam. And this is meant to be a good thing?

How is this is different from paypal? So you have buy credit with local currency, paypall exchanges the currency to dollars, and then they transfer the dollars over to steams bank account.

A better system would be direct payment, but thats a problem that society hasn't figured out yet. How to easy transfer money, without a middle man, in a safe, private respecting, and cost-free way.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#194

Post by csense »

jerf wrote: post #153
stegosaurus wrote: post #141

I find the vitriol towards Bitcoin kind of odd. If I posted an article about Linux 4.1 or something, I wouldn't expect to see comments saying 'meanwhile, I used Windows yesterday, and played GTA5, and it was good'. What gives? Are there forums in which people have this sort of reaction to, I dunno, HTML5? From some of the posts here you would think that it's IED control software.

Actually, I'd suggest you do sometimes see people saying that about Linux, especially when Linux "on the desktop" comes up. And the reason is that neither project is simply a neutral software development project, but are politically charged. Linux at this point really just has a political "tinge" to it with the free software stuff, but Bitcoin is drenched in politics. So people are responding with their political bra…

Maybe the year of the Linux desktop will also be the year of rational political discourse...

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#195

Post by nekopa »

rglullis wrote: post #178
aliakhtar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop using us non americans as your justification for bitcoin. I live in Pakistan, and happily and easily use a visa debit card for buying steam games.

Somehow it seems you are offended. Why? You may even use Visa, still doesn't mean that you are dealing with US dollars. Why do you think is it completely normal to have Visa as being a global country dealing with the cross-country transactions, but not Bitpay? If you have access to the international banking system, great. It is not a bad thing. Just like it is not a bad thing to have bitcoin as an alternative . The o…

I saw this a little differently. Not so much that bit coin is useless. He seemed to argue against using his country as an argument.

You framed it as "I can pay with Visa..."

I think you may have projected your argument onto his statement with no real correlation.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#196

Post by stegosaurus »

pjc50 wrote: post #188
stegosaurus wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I posted further down - most of the issues here seem to stem from people having this idea that in the extreme long term Bitcoin takes over the world and 'their' (as if this is some sort of holy war?) green bits of paper become firewood or something. That isn't a realistic model for how the world works and is really just an odd way of thinking. I can play Quake 3 and have fun with it, and post blogs about it, witho…

In the pre-Gox days of the Bitcoin subreddit you could find plenty of people advocating exactly that - that Bitcoin would make not just 'fiat' money obsolete but government itself. Any idea, good or bad, is vulnerable to being discredited by its most annoying public advocates. Bitcoin 'hate' is mostly a reaction by people who encountered this and got fed up with it. Not to mention that Bitcoin is explicitly anti-envi…

>> In the pre-Gox days of the Bitcoin subreddit

This is true! You don't have to agree with them, though. The network still exists and is cool and useful regardless. You don't even need to use Reddit! I don't hang out on reddit.com/r/visa (does it even exist?)

>> Not to mention that Bitcoin is explicitly anti-environmentalist

I think it would be fairer to say that it's 'a-environmentalist'. The badness or goodness of energy use for PoW just wasn't really a concern.

When I play Quake 3, my computer uses more energy. I consider that an acceptable compromise. Perhaps there are people out there that don't, so they don't play it.

I would find it quite odd if they criticized my habits, though. We should be trying to get along, not looking for chances to grumble at each other, you know?

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#197

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

mbrock wrote: post #97
forgetsusername wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a wonderful use case for BTC. But the overwhelming majority of bitcoin investment, marketing and ownership isn't coming from Tunisia. It's coming from the West (and China), where most people have no problems spending or obtaining currency (maybe China does). Why are Westerners so eager to make money off of people's inability to move money around poor countries, and why is it supported?

One major reason why Bitcoin is used in the West is that it enables integrity and privacy when making online purchases, as opposed to bank-issued cards. I've used BTC in an emergency situation, to transfer money when I would otherwise have needed to wait for several days for an international bank transfer (and then would also have hit my bank's foreign ATM withdrawal limit). Your third paragraph is a veiled insult ba…

Not hating on Bitcoin, but just to set the record straight - unless you're going through some extra hoops like mixers etc - the level of privacy you get with Bitcoin is less than what you get with a CC payment.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#198

Post by ryanlol »

transfire wrote: post #89

I thought Bitcoin had run into a fundamental problem that transactions were now taking hours co complete. And that an internal battle among developers on the fix remained unresolved. Did I miss something?

Because credit card payments and wire transfers take less than hours to complete?

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#199

Post by goldbrick »

wcoenen wrote: post #16
j-pb wrote: post #3

Seems like bitcoin won't die after all, which is a pitty. It's become a centralised mess controlled by a few ASIC producers. Worst part is that it continues eating it's own children, as long as bitcoin is there, no other crypto currency will gain widespread adoption.

There is talk that the playing field will become more level now that the ASICs have catched up with 14 nanometer process technology. Mining equipment should no longer become obsolete every few months.

Hardly. Obsolescence is designed into the very system.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#200

Post by clarkmoody »

pjc50 wrote: post #188
stegosaurus wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I posted further down - most of the issues here seem to stem from people having this idea that in the extreme long term Bitcoin takes over the world and 'their' (as if this is some sort of holy war?) green bits of paper become firewood or something. That isn't a realistic model for how the world works and is really just an odd way of thinking. I can play Quake 3 and have fun with it, and post blogs about it, witho…

In the pre-Gox days of the Bitcoin subreddit you could find plenty of people advocating exactly that - that Bitcoin would make not just 'fiat' money obsolete but government itself. Any idea, good or bad, is vulnerable to being discredited by its most annoying public advocates. Bitcoin 'hate' is mostly a reaction by people who encountered this and got fed up with it. Not to mention that Bitcoin is explicitly anti-envi…

> anti-environmentalist ... vast amounts of wasted electricity

Ironically uses politically-charged language when discussing how bitcoin gets political.

How about: "I'm concerned with the amount of electricity devoted to mining."

Some of the bitcoin-is-going-to-take-over advocates could counter with, "That electricity cost is a lot better for the environment than the standing armies required to secure fiat money."

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