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

371–380 of 447 posts

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#371

Post by Houshalter »

jacobwcarlson wrote: post #370
Houshalter wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?…

> 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. I'm usually pretty good at detecting irony, so I apologize if I've been bested here. But are you honestly suggesting that reductions in consumption and spending are favorable to nation's econom…

>are you honestly suggesting that reductions in consumption and spending are favorable to nation's economy?

Yes absolutely. All the economy does is just allocate resources. If some area of the economy is consuming more, than that is coming at the expense of other areas of the economy. Likewise if spending in one area is cut, that leaves resources available for other things.

That's all supply and demand is. Prices increase or decrease with demand until the supply is stable.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#372

Post by Houshalter »

digi_owl wrote: post #344
Houshalter wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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).

I don't see how you get that conclusion. For one thing, it's not even true, people don't actually hoard currency. They put it in a bank, which invests 90% of it back out into the economy. They've done that even since currency was backed by gold.

Second, even if people literally did fill vaults full of cash, it doesn't hurt anyone. It's not like all the currency is going to actually disappear and people will have to go back to bartering. The remaining currency just becomes worth more.

The bitcoin economy doesn't collapse everytime someone loses a wallet. It never will, because the remaining coins can always be divided further, and always increase in value further.

Lastly it's not like people will literally never spend that money again. They of course intend to spend it at some point. At some point the number of people saving vs taking out of savings will stabilize and everything will be normal. And saving for the future isn't a bad thing. In fact it should be encouraged.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#373

Post by digi_owl »

oppositelock wrote: post #358
digi_owl wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Hoarding has a price - the marginal utility of each remaining token of value increases, so it becomes much more expensive to hoard. Some amount always circulates. Hoarding in a mattress represents a lost opportunity cost. Most hoarders put their money into something that yields interest, that gets it circulating, and it is in fact, how our entire banking system works. Also, let's call hoarding something else, namely…

There can always be made more USD or Euro, the bitcoin had a fixed amount from day one. That makes it a commodity like gold, not a currency.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#374

Post by digi_owl »

Houshalter wrote: post #372
digi_owl wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I don't see how you get that conclusion. For one thing, it's not even true, people don't actually hoard currency. They put it in a bank, which invests 90% of it back out into the economy. They've done that even since currency was backed by gold. Second, even if people literally did fill vaults full of cash, it doesn't hurt anyone. It's not like all the currency is going to actually disappear and people will have to g…

No people do not hoard currency, but they do hoard commodities. As such, bitcoin is at present more a commodity (its setup pretty much use math to emulate gold) than a currency. And the situation will only get worse with time.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#375

Post by digi_owl »

notahacker wrote: post #363
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 pretty strong anti-establishment streak held by goldbugs and cypherpunks is largely shared by HN though. I think much of the sneering comes because there's a third type of person that influences discourse around Bitcoin to some extent: shills. Obviously a lot of Bitcoin evangelists have large BTC holdings because it's entirely in keeping with their belief that it's a brilliant idea, and many if not most exchanges…

Thanks for the reminder. Yes it kinda takes on the form of a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#376

Post by Houshalter »

digi_owl wrote: post #374
Houshalter wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how you get that conclusion. For one thing, it's not even true, people don't actually hoard currency. They put it in a bank, which invests 90% of it back out into the economy. They've done that even since currency was backed by gold. Second, even if people literally did fill vaults full of cash, it doesn't hurt anyone. It's not like all the currency is going to actually disappear and people will have to g…

No people do not hoard currency, but they do hoard commodities. As such, bitcoin is at present more a commodity (its setup pretty much use math to emulate gold) than a currency. And the situation will only get worse with time.

As I said in the parent comment, there's nothing different about bitcoin vs other commodities that people can hoard.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#377

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

ryanl0l wrote: post #246
hartpuff wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Credit card payment is a '2 phase' process. The second phase you are referring to as settlement - moving funds from the issuing bank to merchant's bank does take days.

The first phase of the process - authorization, when successful not only makes sure the customer has enough credit on their account, it also reduces their buying power by the grand total of the auth thus guaranteeing the funds to the merchant. And it takes 2-4 seconds.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#378

Post by maaku »

aliakhtar wrote: post #307
maaku wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You mean illegal transactions.

As with the 2nd amendment, arguing for the right to bear arms is not in and of itself an argument for their use. In this case, bitcoin represents by which civil disobedience could be practiced. As long as it is maintained as a real alternative (meaning first and foremost it operates outside the constraints of authority) then a reasonable argument can be made that regulators in democracies will compromise in allowing greater user rights in the official alternatives. Napster and bittorrent did change the music industry, in the end.

But even without game theoretic arguments involving civil disobedience, Bitcoin is still interesting. It offers cryptographic protections that have never existed before in real fintech applications (e.g. programmable signatures), and radical transparency and configurable trust that can patch the sort of vulnerabilities that led to the 2007 financial crisis.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#379

Post by maaku »

freework wrote: post #345
maaku wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We can cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now Bitcoin usage is orders of magnitude less efficient than it could be.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#380

Post by bcook »

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…

Are your counter-claims not hyperbolic ("liberate people from bondage")?

Regardless of the extreme pros or cons, Bitcoin is revolutionary.

PS - Your middle paragraph is painfully hard to read (is it one, huge sentence?). This makes your post feel like it was purely an emotional, unedited response with little filtering...

Post reply on HN