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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#341

Post by Retra »

[deleted] wrote: post #263
vectorpush wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

>I don't have a credit card, and it feels futuristic to point my phone at the invoice and see it light up as "paid". Without typing in anything, without any risk of cc theft, without anyone in between. I think that is revolutionary, yes.

You've basically just said you use your phone as a heavier, battery-powered credit card. You might as well be arguing that you think horses are a revolutionary new transportation medium because they don't need gas and can obey spoken commands, and cars don't all do that yet.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#342

Post by Houshalter »

digi_owl wrote: post #310
vectorpush wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Lots of goods tend to increase in value over time. Land, gold, stocks, etc. How is bitcoin any different? If people want to hoard, nothing is stopping them. They will just hoard, nothing has ever been stopping them.

And hoarding isn't a bad thing. If you aren't spending your money, then you aren't taking resources out of the economy. That means more resources for everyone else. Spending money, consumption, is what should be discouraged.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#343

Post by digi_owl »

oppositelock wrote: post #338
digi_owl wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The incentive to hoard, also often called the "deflationary spiral", is a theory proposed by neo-Keynesian economists, which doesn't appear to be as bad as they say. People have finite lifespan, and so, they want to use their hoards to better these finite lives, which leads them to spend. This preference, known as the "time preference", strikes a balance with the tendency to hoard. It is impossible to predict where t…

> Why do you buy cell phones or laptops today, knowing that future ones will be better or cheaper?

Direct practical utility.

> Why buy some food today, when you know your purchasing power will be greater next month?

I don't eat, i starve, i die.

> Why pay for housing when prices are falling, knowing your contract will be cheaper in five years?

Now there you get into something interesting. Though the five years view is comically long.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#344

Post by digi_owl »

Houshalter wrote: post #342
digi_owl wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Lots of goods tend to increase in value over time. Land, gold, stocks, etc. How is bitcoin any different?…

Hoarding is a bad thing when we are talking about a currency.

The main function of a currency is exchange, not storage.

Without a currency you are back at the barter stage, or move to IOUs (that may ironically turn into currency if allows to pass from person to person).

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#345

Post by freework »

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.

But you need the person n the other end to be set up with bitcoin. With the current transaction limit, the likelyhood that the other person is set up to accept bitcoin stays low.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#346

Post by MichaelGG »

mbmott wrote: post #145
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this was done for any political or idealistic reason. I imagine bitcoin makes it a lot easier for purchases in countries with unreliable banking, high levels of fraud, etc. Try transfering a non-trivial amount of money to Eastern Europe, Africa, Russia, Brazil, etc. Steam deals with this millions of times a day with fraud credit attempts, legitimate credit cards being turned down, etc. Legitimate buyers…

That was pretty much my point. Bitcoin has a solid use case (being a global currency) and Steam is exploiting it.

It's not that it's a global currency. It's that there's zero buyer protection. Or phrased positively, zero risk fit the merchant. Anyone offering that in any currency would be useful.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#347

Post by phil21 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #134
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.

>>The only measure of success here is how much people do or do not use it. No, that's your only measure of success. In order for Bitcoin to succeed as a viable payment platform, businesses also need to adopt it wholly, which means actually conducting business in Bitcoin rather than converting it to a "real" currency as soon as possible. Basically, if they are treating it as hot potato, that means they see it as too u…

> Basically, if they are treating it as hot potato, that means they see it as too unstable and risky.

Eh, I'm not so sure. You are probably right, but at the same time they probably want USD for the same reason they get USD from Paypal or their merchant bank when someone pays in a different currency.

Is Paypal not a viable payment platform?

There are two parts to Bitcoin - some folks think it's a great store of value. I do not. I think it's an amazing decentralized transaction system that can replace VISA/MC - not replace the US Treasury.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#348

Post by azernik »

hartpuff wrote: post #171
aedron wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter. I can pay with bitcoin on Steam. It makes bitcoin more fungible and thus viable as a currency. 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 QR code on the screen. Screen updates to show payment was made. Love it. (Now, acquiring the bitcoins in the first place though...)

> 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…

> Isn't using Bitpay just a way of exchanging bitcoin for dollars, while kidding yourself that's not what you're doing?

That's fungibility. That's liquidity. A big marker of stability and legitimacy for a normal currency is that it's freely convertible.

A parallel example: you can pay for stuff "in euros" on Paypal, but Steam likely only gets dollars. That's still good for the viability of the euro as a currency, because it can be easily exchanged for goods and services, even with a middleman.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#349

Post by ebbv »

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.

> 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'.

Back in the 90's when there was more of a religious fervor around Linux the way there is around Bitcoin right now, yeah you would have.

The vitriol is no mystery, it's an obvious reaction to the way so many people have rapturously talked about Bitcoin as if it's going to make governments irrelevant.

We're at the beginning of Bitcoin being treated more like the novelty that it is, and possibly finding a niche where it can be useful over the long term. As it enters this phase where the hype around it dies down, the vitriol will as well.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#350

Post by evilmushroom »

Retra wrote: post #341
[deleted] wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

>I don't have a credit card, and it feels futuristic to point my phone at the invoice and see it light up as "paid". Without typing in anything, without any risk of cc theft, without anyone in between. I think that is revolutionary, yes. You've basically just said you use your phone as a heavier, battery-powered credit card. You might as well be arguing that you think horses are a revolutionary new transportation med…

Horses also have some interesting auto-pilot features, not to mention they are green. Their fuel source generates oxygen during development and some of their byproducts can be used to enhance your garden!
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