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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#301

Post by solotronics »

AlexMax wrote: post #242
solotronics wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I use a hardware wallet to store mine, analogy would be keeping your cash in a vault, yes you have to unlock it manually each time to get money out. Given the ease of use and recovery with a hardware wallet its the safest and most free store of value that I know of. Definitely a must have for amounts over a few hundred dollars. Its quite ingenious when you figure out how they work.

https://bitcointrezor.com/

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#302

Post by jtbigwoo »

mfoy_ wrote: post #256
ssharp wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/31xp48/why_di...

Interesting... just having a "donate with BitCoin" link visible caused a noticeable drop in donations? Similarly with revenue on a merchant page. That seems bizarre.

Just speculating, but it could be a couple things:

Providing more choices can often result in consumers simply giving up. At a former job we did an A/B test where we showed some visitors two options to buy our product and added a third option for other visitors. In the three option scenario, the bounce rate was about 10% higher.

Or, it could be that there are folks for whom bitcoin is linked with drugs, gambling, piracy, etc. Maybe seeing a bitcoin option makes the site look less reputable.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#303

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

the_rosentotter wrote: post #282
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Double spends are actually not that difficult, much easier to implement than a fraudulent Credit Card transaction for example.

In addition to double spends there are also things like volatile mainnet confirmation times etc.

Which is why bitpay won't fund the merchant until 6 confs on the bitcon network.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#304

Post by bduerst »

VMG wrote: post #254
Forbo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

If the PoW serves any other purpose than mining bitcoin, it can't be used, since there won't be any opportunity cost in mining on the most recent chain.

Their point is that the PoW is wasteful because the redundant work is useless.

See primecoin.io for an example of more useful PoW.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#305

Post by aianus »

wallacoloo wrote: post #274
aianus wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They don't accept CNY directly, they instead accept USD from their merchant bank on behalf of people who wish to pay in CNY" This is a pointless distinction.

No, it is a meaningful distinction for some. For those of us hoping to avoid the overhead of payment processors by using bitcoin, it puts the two methods on equal footing instead - there's still a middleman taking a (likely nontrivial) cut from our purchases. Also, I imagine CNY -> USD conversion is probably done on an exchange instead of through a company like BitPay, so the comparison might not be very accurate.

> Also, I imagine CNY -> USD conversion is probably done on an exchange instead of through a company like BitPay, so the comparison might not be very accurate.

There is no such thing as a Forex exchange, it is done through banks who hedge their exposure to other market participants over-the-counter and take a cut just the same.

There is absolutely no reason (in the long term) that Bitcoin would cost more to exchange for merchants than any foreign fiat currency does today.

And even today, a ~1% Bitcoin processing fee is approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of what credit cards cost to process.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#306

Post by VikingCoder »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #302
mfoy_ wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting... just having a "donate with BitCoin" link visible caused a noticeable drop in donations? Similarly with revenue on a merchant page. That seems bizarre.

Just speculating, but it could be a couple things: Providing more choices can often result in consumers simply giving up. At a former job we did an A/B test where we showed some visitors two options to buy our product and added a third option for other visitors. In the three option scenario, the bounce rate was about 10% higher. Or, it could be that there are folks for whom bitcoin is linked with drugs, gambling, pir…

Well, it may be that using bitcoin right now is... not easy.

"Bitcoin! I've always wanted to try it. [Click.] 'Wallet address', what's that? Okay, I'll just Google Bitcoin. 'Buy viagra and pot online,' oh uhm... Okay, creating a wallet.. Wow, this isn't easy. Okay, now... Time to convert some cash to bitcoins! What the hell?!? Why does it need all of this info? 'For tax purposes bitcoins are not currency,' what the hell?!? Okay, um... What the hell is 'Magic the Gathering'? 'Fraud.' 'Japan.' 'Apologizes.' Hmmm... Ah, forget it."

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#307

Post by aliakhtar »

maaku wrote: post #241
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.

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

You mean illegal transactions.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#308

Post by digi_owl »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #302
mfoy_ wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting... just having a "donate with BitCoin" link visible caused a noticeable drop in donations? Similarly with revenue on a merchant page. That seems bizarre.

Just speculating, but it could be a couple things: Providing more choices can often result in consumers simply giving up. At a former job we did an A/B test where we showed some visitors two options to buy our product and added a third option for other visitors. In the three option scenario, the bounce rate was about 10% higher. Or, it could be that there are folks for whom bitcoin is linked with drugs, gambling, pir…

Choice paralysis is something that economists have known about for some time, but seem reluctant to talk about (because more choice has to be better).

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#309

Post by aliakhtar »

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.

There is already a global currency which works great: USD. I live in Pakistan, and I regularly pay my AWS bill, IDE subscription, Netflix, VPN, and a lot of other things with USD.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#310

Post by digi_owl »

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…

You get this because the properties of bitcoin attracts two kinds of people.

Goldbugs, because of how bitcoin is "mined" and is inherently deflationary. And gold is the one true currency, m'kay.

Cypherpunks, because it is built around cryptographics. And cryptographics makes anything double plus good.

Never mind that both kinds have a strong anti-establishment streak.

That said, if they could get away form their anti-inflation fanaticism, and find some way to speed up the ledger processing, then the distributed ledger part of bitcoin may have a future.

This because while inflation can be bad when it runs riot (though money printing in itself is rarely if ever the cause) it is better in the long run than deflation, as that allows some entity or other to corner the market.

And in the end, all currencies are tokens of account. Meaning that they exist in the end to make sure nobody double spends. But to be effective in doing so, the token material must the worth less then the face value. If not, people will have an incentive to hoard. And that will drive an economy into the ground.

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