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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#241

Post by maaku »

aliakhtar wrote: post #103
mbmott wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $100 cellphone isn't a decentralized peer to peer network. You are comparing apples to nose-hairs. Bitcoin will scale in the same way the internet scaled... slowly and then suddenly.

People don't use cars because they have a hard on for internal combustion engines. They use cars to go from one place to another, i.e their utility. The utility of bitcoin is its TPS rate.

The utility of bitcoin is censorship-resistant transactions. You don't need a high on-chain transaction rate for that.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#242

Post by AlexMax »

solotronics wrote: post #235
coldtea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of the hands of politicians and bankers and right into the hands of a script kiddie when the box that stores your wallet - be it locally or an exchange - gets hijacked and your wallet depleted. Or where nobody can get to it after you suffer catastrophic data-loss and you can't get to your wallet anymore.

If you want a hedge against a catastrophic collapse of the dollar (or whatever your local currency happens to be), there are innumerable other, better alternatives.

Besides, if there was such a collapse, who's to say that Bitcoin won't get dragged down with it? After all, more than likely you're using bitcoins to buy things that cost dollars.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#243

Post by ryanl0l »

arielpts wrote: post #228
ryanlol wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, credit card payments, CNP, usually takes seconds to complete. I may take days (or month depends on the country) to settle.

Exactly like bitcoin payments then, except bitcoin settlements only take hours.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#244

Post by solotronics »

mbmott wrote: post #148
aliakhtar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't use cars because they have a hard on for internal combustion engines. They use cars to go from one place to another, i.e their utility. The utility of bitcoin is its TPS rate.

Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. Like I said, Bitcoin will scale like the internet scaled which is in direct proportion to demand. Blocks aren't often full and if you are in a hurry then you need to pay 10 or 20 cents to prioritize your transaction.

The fee is currently 6 cents.

One interesting thing is there is an optimal fee based on the size of the block of transactions.

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/#delay

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#245

Post by ZenoArrow »

pauletienney wrote: post #156
ZenoArrow wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I'm not sure what Bitcoin equivalent of "leaving cash on the street" you're inferring. It might be helpful if you elaborated on that." Bitcoins are a form of digital cash. You store Bitcoins in a wallet. If you lose your Bitcoin wallet you lose your bitcoins. In a similar sense, if you lose your wallet containing notes/coins, you lose your notes/coins. The security risk is the same.

But the digital form of bitcoin change things. A good hacker might check for thousands of computer a day to find private keys but he can't walk along kilometers to find coins on the ground.

Don't expose them to hackers then, keep your bitcoin wallet away from the Internet until you want to use it.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#246

Post by ryanl0l »

hartpuff wrote: post #231
ryanlol wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>Then why does it only happen using bitcoin?

Because some people insist on waiting for the payment to settle before actually providing the services, although it's not nearly as common as it used to be.

This is just completely unrealistic with credit cards where settlement times are far longer than with bitcoin, days or months.

>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.

I don't know, I use bitcoins to pay for things regularly and pretty much everyone accepts zero-confirmation transactions nowadays (which is pretty much the same as accepting credit card payments, except the settlement will most likely take less than an hour).

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#247

Post by dragontamer »

gruez wrote: post #95
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?

Bitpay (steam's payment processor) accepts 0-confirmation transactions

Doesn't that open Bitpay up to double-spending attacks?

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#248

Post by ssharp »

vectorpush wrote: post #225
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.

I'll offer a controversial explanation: bitcoin enthusiasts have exhausted most of the oxygen in the room with regard to rational bitcoin discussion. The never-ending adulation of bitcoin as the greatest invention since the internet, the hyperbolic claims that bitcoin will do things like revolutionize payments, end global war, eliminate the need for banks, liberate the people from bondage, the litany of bitcoin and b…

Let's not forget this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/31xp48/why_di...

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#249

Post by r3bl »

maaku wrote: post #240
overcast wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes! According to this new definition, about one out of every three devices run Linux at the moment.[0]

I hate this "Linux of the desktop" analogy because people really fail to realize that it has already happened and that they have missed it. I blogged about this a couple of months back: https://blog.r3bl.me/en/year-of-linux/

http://gs.statcounter.com/#all-os-ww-monthly-201503-201603

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#250

Post by lwelyk »

StavrosK wrote: post #220
johndevor wrote: post #146

In other news: https://i.imgur.com/3ncet7I.jpg

What does "pocket medic" mean in the TF2 context?

Means you as the medic character stick to healing that one person, becoming their "pocket medic." Commonly people pocket medic heavys, the biggest characters who have a large spray weapon and high max HP.
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