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

391–400 of 447 posts

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#391

Post by richardwhiuk »

deepnet wrote: post #164
richardwhiuk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal currency which is both less centralized and easier to use.

'Normal' currency has severe problems which are important current issues for many and Bitcoin solves: [1], Prevention of access - e.g. Nationwide Bank unserved queues & capped withdrawl in the UK on the days sub-prime hit is often the case in recession or bank runs. [2], Censorship of payee - e.g. the inability to donate to Wikileaks by any means except Bitcoin when 'collatoral damage' incited US Senators to successf…

These are all also problems with bitcoin.

[1] Bitcoin is very difficult to keep safe, so most people will store it on sites like Coinbase / MtGox. These sites will inevitably lend other people money, which will lead to the same issues, in exchange for interest.

[2/3] Censorship of payee / Censorship of product. The perceived anonymity in bitcoin is largely fictional - you can extract the details of who paid who for what, and you can prevent someone exchanging bitcoin for fiat currency / goods. At the moment authorities simply don't care because the value of the transactions is insignificant in relation to hard currency.

None of these 'problems' (and society in general doesn't care about these issues) are to do with the currency. The first one is endemic to the concept of a bank which can lend more money than it has, no matter what currency it deals in. The second two are social / regulatory problems which won't be fixed by some new crypto-anarchist dream.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#392

Post by bildung »

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? Why buy some food today, when you know your purchasing power will be greater next month? Why pay for housing when prices are falling, knowing your contract will be cheaper in five years?*

The deflationary spiral is not about consumption of non-durable goods. Thats why all of your examples don't really work as reasoning against this concept. It rather is about investment and consumption of durable goods: Cars, forklifts, the pick and place machines at foxconn.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#393

Post by richardwhiuk »

Rmilb wrote: post #271
VMG wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there certainly is a risk of centralization in Bitcoin. At the moment Chinese miners probably are in a position to collude and censor transactions they don't like. However they can't steal assets, so they have a limited incentive to do so. Users only need to find one miner that includes a transaction in order to make a payment, albeit a slow one.

And those miners know the minute they start to censor transactions the price of BTC would probably suffer greatly.

That doesn't mean it won't become illegal for miners to authorize a transaction.

From a certain legal standpoint (IANAL) the miner is facilitating all of the transactions which he creates a block for. This might make him liable if any of those transactions involve blackmail / extortion / money laundering.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#394

Post by richardwhiuk »

mateuszf wrote: post #41
richardwhiuk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal currency which is both less centralized and easier to use.

The ones that can be printed by centralized entities?

Printed by multiple centralized entities, just like mining pools. Bitcoin is rapidly centralizing.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#395

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Houshalter wrote: post #371
jacobwcarlson wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 inc…

Economics, like physics, scales messily. If the whole world decided to save everything for one year starting today, the economy would free fall. Since nobody is consuming, nobody need produce. Factories grind to a halt and deteriorate, social bonds and casual knowledge fade, and the world returns a year later materially worse off.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#396

Post by bildung »

fjidodhofjf wrote: post #360
wyck wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why many bitcoin proponents comes across as naive, broad political statements bordering on false beliefs come across as juvenile and in many cases fanatic. Stay with the facts and reality, a.k.a. the technology, statements like the above create a toxic environment in which the bitcoin community currently finds itself deeply mired in.

How false is it criticize central bank policy? They are dragging the world into another great depression, destroying the lives of billions along the way. At some point it gets tiresome to speak with those who have no understanding of economics nor history. Can you defend the last 8 years of Central Bank policy, are you even schooled in this area of study? Your criticisms are naïve.

Inflation for the last decade is at a record low.

http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=cpi+yoy&v=201604202...

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#397

Post by taejo »

VMG wrote: post #386
bduerst wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their point is that the PoW is wasteful because the redundant work is useless. See primecoin.io for an example of more useful PoW.

So in primecoin I can mine on any block and generate a useful byproduct? What stops me from attacking that network by mining on my private chain with a double spend? I have no opportunity cost.

> What stops me from attacking that network by mining on my private chain with a double spend?

Nothing stops you mining on a private chain, but since you have a small minority of the compute power, the network doesn't care about your private chain. The same is true in Bitcoin.

> I have no opportunity cost.

You could be mining blocks that generate useful byproducts and currency.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#398

Post by deepnet »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #391
deepnet wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Normal' currency has severe problems which are important current issues for many and Bitcoin solves: [1], Prevention of access - e.g. Nationwide Bank unserved queues & capped withdrawl in the UK on the days sub-prime hit is often the case in recession or bank runs. [2], Censorship of payee - e.g. the inability to donate to Wikileaks by any means except Bitcoin when 'collatoral damage' incited US Senators to successf…

These are all also problems with bitcoin. [1] Bitcoin is very difficult to keep safe, so most people will store it on sites like Coinbase / MtGox. These sites will inevitably lend other people money, which will lead to the same issues, in exchange for interest. [2/3] Censorship of payee / Censorship of product. The perceived anonymity in bitcoin is largely fictional - you can extract the details of who paid who for w…

Thought provoking, I mostly agree with the following caveats:

I see the complete transparency of Bitcoin as a strength, it is certainly an antidote to the opacity of offshore / shell companies & tax dodging.

[2] & [3] they can't prevent payment using Bitcoins but one could be arrested after the fact and detained without computer access.

[3] This is why I said civil disobedience for [3]. Bitcoins are a public act.

National Currencies like sterling are not implicity bad and actual cash notes can be used for [2] but electronically Sterling et al. lack a lot of freedom.

[4] could be fees which currently dissallow national currency micro transactions, which have great utility for instance in a post advertising models & the micro-services revolution to come.

Snarky to say 'crypto-anarchist dream', crypto means something other than an abbreviation for cryptography in that context e.g. crypto-fascism - which many fear democracies are secretly becoming.

Bitcoin is not a dream it is a working implementation, usefully used daily.

With Open Bazaar now running, a free global market is enabled - without freedom markets are unfair and not proper capitalism. Adam Smith best points out the issues with crony capitalism & regulatory monopolies.

Bitcoin seems like healthy competition to me, national money is overly regulated in some ways and under regulated in others. Arguably to the benefit of the rich and powerful as most governments seem weak in the face of corruption by lobbying these days. Electronic (national currency) transactions are innefficient & overly costly, Bitcoin profoundly highlights this.

[1] Bitcoin is provably safe, the safety of ones possessions and computer is the current issue of the day. The UK & US government are promoting breaking encryption and making everyone unsafe.

It is good to have alternatives to help ensure regulatory over-reach can't happen as easily as it recently has.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#399

Post by hartpuff »

azernik wrote: post #348
hartpuff wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, bec…

The point is, unlike with Bitcoin, people with Euros do not have any significant ideological opposition towards dollars, or acquire Euros because they believe it is superior to or will one day replace 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.

So it's good for Bitcoin in exactly the same way that it's good for Dogecoin, and other popular alts.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#400

Post by azernik »

hartpuff wrote: post #399
azernik wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, bec…

The point is, unlike with Bitcoin, people with Euros do not have any significant ideological opposition towards dollars, or acquire Euros because they believe it is superior to or will one day replace 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. So it's good for Bitcoin in exactly the same way that it's good…

> The point is, unlike with Bitcoin, people with Euros do not have any significant ideological opposition towards dollars, or acquire Euros because they believe it is superior to or will one day replace dollars.

And that's why it's a bit silly to have ideological positions about currencies :-P I'm just arguing that it is actually good for Bitcoin the currency, not that it's good for the bitcoiner ideology.

> So it's good for Bitcoin in exactly the same way that it's good for Dogecoin, and other popular alts.

Oh yeah, totally. It's good for the viability of blockchain currencies in general.

Post reply on HN