Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 447 posts

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#231

Post by hartpuff »

ryanlol wrote: post #189
hartpuff wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter. I can pay with bitcoin on Steam. I can pay with Dogecoin with one additional step. >It makes bitcoin more fungible and thus viable as a currency. Isn't using Bitpay just a way of exchanging bitcoin for dollars, while kidding yourself that's not what you're doing? > And for what it's worth, I find the bitcoin payment process immensely superior to credit cards: Just pull out the phone and scan the…

>All that's left is to wait countless tedious hours for the funds to appear in the, for example, Namesilo account. It is easy (so is using a credit card), but it's almost uselessly slow (unlike credit cards). This is not a bitcoin problem.

Then why does it only happen using bitcoin?

Actually, scratch that, because it doesn't even matter. Wherever you want to lay the blame (anywhere but bitcoin) it's a problem for anyone using bitcoin, making it more useless than (not "immensely superior" to, as claimed) using a credit card or Paypal, which makes it a problem for bitcoin.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#232

Post by CJefferson »

gnaritas wrote: post #217
pjc50 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Not to mention that Bitcoin is explicitly anti-environmentalist: it's built on vast amounts of wasted electricity. That like saying Tesla's are anti-environmentalist, it's built to waste vast amounts electricity. It's quite literally non-sense. Point at any other nations currency that consumes less energy than Bitcoin; you think printing bills and minting coins doesn't use energy? You think moving giants piles of c…

But the whole bitcoin network does a tiny, tiny number of transactions compared to any of those other systems. The cost per transaction (of the system, not to the user) of bitcoin is comparatively huge.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#233

Post by stegosaurus »

brownbat wrote: post #219
stegosaurus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're spot on with this. The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up. We seem to be able to leave each other alone when it comes to using vi vs. emacs - the odd joke comes up, but that's about it. But politics? There seems to be this attitude of conversion, missionaries, convincing, it's kind of frustrating. I think it's healthy to question one's views somet…

> The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up. Yeah, politics is the mindkiller.[0] Dan Kahan's research could lead to some interesting suggestions about why this might be.[1] There are many questions we answer dispassionately about facts, but then there's this other series of questions about the world, where we really don't answer with reference to specific knowledg…

Thank you for this comment. The links are fantastic. On the reading list. :)

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#234

Post by Frondo »

clarkmoody wrote: post #200
pjc50 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

And, of course, the idea that bitcoin changes the world so radically that no one has an army anymore is absurd. But I think you've just touched on another reason why people react so strongly to bitcoin-related articles.

It's like, bitcoin started out with a pretty good-sounding idea: decentralized currency, like the old Gnutella network except for money! hey I like it!

Then people start talking about it and the first next step is "hey and bitcoin takes control over money and puts it into the hands of the PEOPLE" except it doesn't! It doesn't at all! Control over the money supply, there's at least some tenuous link between votes we regularly cast as citizens and the people making those decisions. Decisions over bitcoin's economics? Better start coding, except no one will accept your patches to bump up the 21 million bitcoin supply...not so democratic.

Then the conversation turns to pretty goofy new-world-order stuff, like "bitcoin will eliminate the need for nations to have standing armies!!" Except the reality is, look at how the bitcoin people themselves squabble like a bunch of old hens, in the face of what seem to be legitimate critiques. These are the people leading the way to a new world order? I don't think so.

And then we look at the environmental costs, and that's not good. Or the deflationary economics of the system itself, and those aren't good either. Or how it seems a lot more like an elaborate ponzi scheme, and that's not good either.

Basically, what bugs me about bitcoin is that legitimate critiques are always brushed off with really absurd replies. Kinda kills the whole thing for me.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#235

Post by solotronics »

coldtea wrote: post #48
clemensley wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why hackernews hates bitcoin so much. Can someone explain?

It's because it's not just comprised of tech people, who are excited about its theoretical underpinnings, but also by business savvy people, who know that it will hardly fly for numerous reasons (and if a similar technology ever catches up, it will have so many government imposed regulations as to be totally different), plus old jaded tech persons who know a marginal at best tech and/or snake oil when they see it. As…

I think there are literally hundreds of examples from the past century where huge swaths of the population lost all of their wealth due to political and economic turmoil. You are welcome to keep all of your funds in the hands of the central bankers if you believe in them, nobody will stop you. I will keep a portion of my money in my own hands in BTC where no corrupt politician or banker can get it.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#236

Post by timbowhite »

clemensley wrote: post #24
hypron wrote: post #21

So many bitcoin haters in these comments... we'll see who's wrong in a decade or so.

I've always wondered why hackernews hates bitcoin so much. Can someone explain?

I wondered the same a while ago, maybe the responses there will give you some insight:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9711738

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#237

Post by AlexMax »

clemensley wrote: post #130
overcast wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this like the Linux on desktop prophecy?

Maybe this isn't a bad analogy. I'm sure you are aware that Linux is the most used consumer facing OS today (android). So sometimes these prophecies do come true, just almost never in the way you think in advance.

Extrapolating the analogy, this leads me to believe that there will eventually be a company that uses the blockchain to deliver a killer app, but it won't be Bitcoin.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#238

Post by Forbo »

clarkmoody wrote: post #200
pjc50 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> "That electricity cost is a lot better for the environment than the standing armies required to secure fiat money."

There are better alternatives to brute-forcing hashes and generating nothing but waste heat in order to mine cryptocurrency. At least those cycles could be put toward something useful, like the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Gridcoin uses proof-of-research in BOINC as the basis for compensation.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#239

Post by acbabis »

stegosaurus wrote: post #157
jerf wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you're spot on with this. The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up. We seem to be able to leave each other alone when it comes to using vi vs. emacs - the odd joke comes up, but that's about it. But politics? There seems to be this attitude of conversion, missionaries, convincing, it's kind of frustrating. I think it's healthy to question one's views somet…

> The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up.

I'm not so sure about that, especially when compared to other forums. People here often cite specific laws, articles, and papers when making political points[citation needed].

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#240

Post by maaku »

overcast wrote: post #67
hypron wrote: post #21

So many bitcoin haters in these comments... we'll see who's wrong in a decade or so.

Is this like the Linux on desktop prophecy?

Linux is on the desktop. It's just the definition of "desktop" has changed... The devices people use day-to-day are predominantly either iOS or Android, just like how the devices people used day-to-day in the 90's were Windows.
Post reply on HN