Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#281

Post by statoshi » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

jcfrei wrote: post #147

vesinisa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the largest put off with Bitcoin is the community. They seem to be very intolerant of criticism, to the appearance of a cult or ideology.[1] The problem lies in that unlike most open source projects, a sizeable portion of the community stands to make huge profits, giving rise to a permanent conflict of interest. Time and time again, the financial interest of the early adopters continue to stifle actual develop…

That's exactly my problem with bitcoin as well. I'm just elaborating Hearn's points here; but as it turns out the incentive for miners (in order to pay their mining) is actually a deflationary good (so the value of their mined coins keeps increasing). Unfortunately miners are also required for the confirmation of transactions. On the other hand a global payment system would require a currency which is at the very lea…

Stability is relative and a matter of perspective - it's not technically possible to engineer something that has a stable value because the value of everything is constantly in flux.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#282

Post by the_rosentotter » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #229

seanalltogether wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does steam have to worry about transaction confirmation? I would've assumed that bitpay guarantees the funds to their partners regardless of any potential bitcoin shenanigans.

Looking at bitpay's docs (this is a pretty typical setup), merchant is getting IPNs (aka Webhooks) with invoice statuses based on what is happening with that payment on the Bitcoin network - https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states . So yes, as a merchant it's up to you if you want to wait until the funds are there (invoice status == 'Complete') or ship as soon as the payment is detected ('Paid' status). Bitpay will ob…

A transaction would have to be worth thousands of dollars to be worth the effort of setting up a successful double spend attack. For the vast majority of use cases this concern doesn't enter into the picture at all, and an immediate 0-conf transaction is fine.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#283

Post by statoshi » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

k33n wrote: post #70

lsadam0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so? Bitcoin is an accepted payment method. Why should you care how exactly they handle processing of it? The only measure of success here is how much people do or do not use it. Are you honestly trying to argue against their acceptance by nitpicking the details of the backend implementation? 99.9% of people don't care.

It read to me as questioning the value of BTC since neither Bitpay or Valve are interested in holding BTC themselves.

It should be quite clear that in this particular instance, Valve has decided that Bitcoin has utility as a transfer of value. You're questioning whether or not Bitcoin has utility as a store of value / unit of account. It appears that to Valve it does not, but there is also a chicken/egg issue with bootstrapping a new currency given that Bitcoin doesn't have sufficient adoption yet to complete a full lifecycle in terms of usage. That is - Valve has no use in holding bitcoins because they can't use them to pay their bills. This may change at some point.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#284

Post by statoshi » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #61

jMyles wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's all I care about Well that's a bit short-sighted then. Plenty of people care about a lot more than that in a currency, namely that is it responsibly and equitably managed. Bitcoin is not this, of course, but it's a giant step in the right direction compared to the Federal Reserve.

No, it's a massive step in the wrong direction compared to the federal reserve. There is reason bitcoins value wildly fluctuates and the US dollars doesn't.

Not really - it's more because the dollar-based economy is massive in comparison to Bitcoin and thus has much higher capital requirements to move the market. If you think that centrally managed currencies are great, you should probably read the multitude of horror stories. Here's a recent one: http://bloom.bg/1ryY2ZK

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#285

Post by LeoPanthera » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #277

LeoPanthera wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about Bitcoin, or cash?

Cash isn't quite as bad because it's less practical, but yes both are primarily useful for crime and antisocial activity. I would be suspicious of someone who paid a large bill in cash (or used gold, or bricks of drugs); wouldn't you?

I'm not answering your question as written because I disagree with the concept of cash and "bricks of drugs" as being equally suspicious.

Being suspicious of cash is very dangerous. Historically, the poor rely on cash far more than the rich, so if we start demonizing it, really you're demonizing the poor. Politicians know this and often exploit it to help their rich friends.

Bitcoin has the capability to be the great equalizer, not just across economic bands but also across country borders. Your fear of it seems unfounded, though the paranoid part of me does wonder if you work for Visa or some other financial institution.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#286

Post by rhino369 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

Rmilb wrote: post #270

rhino369 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. But it's hard to get and hard to use. It's useful for a pseudo-anonymous transfer for value. Unless I'm doing something illegal, Visa is a better option.

That's very true, Bitcoin doesn't solve many problems for people with access to credit banking. However, billions of people don't have access to Visa or a bank account. They only need a phone to send payments internationally.

Those people don't have access to bitcoin either.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#287

Post by ok_craig » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:46 PM UTC

k33n wrote: post #70

lsadam0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so? Bitcoin is an accepted payment method. Why should you care how exactly they handle processing of it? The only measure of success here is how much people do or do not use it. Are you honestly trying to argue against their acceptance by nitpicking the details of the backend implementation? 99.9% of people don't care.

It read to me as questioning the value of BTC since neither Bitpay or Valve are interested in holding BTC themselves.

At this point there are many people who simply have bitcoin. Maybe they bought it a long time ago, maybe they bought it recently. The acquisition time isn't really a factor anymore, it's been around long enough that people simply have it, and they would like to be able to spend it directly.

There are not many people specifically acquiring bitcoin just to pay for steam games with it, where it will be converted right back. Maybe some to test. Questioning the value as a result of the "usd -> btc -> usd" transfer isn't really applicable because it just generally doesn't apply anymore.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#288

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

apozem wrote: post #99

joosters wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I'm converting dollars to bitcoin via my electricity bill, with even more inefficiency.

> While ASICs represent the fixed cost of Bitcoin mining, the expense of electricity is the marginal cost; indeed, Bitcoin is, for all intents and purposes, the digital representation of electricity. https://stratechery.com/2015/21-inc-and-the-future-of-bitcoi...

21 inc's ideas are a horrible scam. Why would you pay hundreds of dollars, to buy an inefficient miner that is 10% as efficient, when you could just buy hundreds of dollars of bitcoin.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#289

Post by solotronics » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #193

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.

Thats already bitcoin. Personally I use it to settle debts with my friends. They are mostly tech people and find it fascinating to use. Bitcoins go from me directly to them without any middleman ( except the bitcoin network I guess ).

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#290

Post by solotronics » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

VMG wrote: post #19

07d046 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there a small group of people who essentially control all of Bitcoin with no oversight? There might be a group of 30 very wealthy early adopters, miners, main developers, people who own the communication channels, and other influencers, who have 90% of the influence in what happens with Bitcoin. Real currencies can't boast to being that centralised.

Their wealth depends on bitcoin keeping the properties it currently has. For instance they could try to merge a code change that doubles the balances for early adopters, but it would immediately destroy their wealth because people would stop using the currency.

I agree with this, game theory shows they have everything to gain by protecting and fostering Bitcoin development.