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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#431

Post by ryanlol »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #407
ryanlol wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin works exactly the same, except settlement times are significantly shorter. You authorize (sign) a transaction, broadcast it and the network confirms it. Signing a transaction takes only a fractions of a second, and to the merchant it's a significantly stronger guarantee of settlement than a credit card authorization.

Credit Card authorization guarantees the funds to the merchant. Signing a bitcoin transaction and broadcasting it to the blockchain does not. Successful confirmation of the tx on the blockchain does, and to be on the safe side the rule of thumb is to wait for 6 confs on the bitcoin blockchain before considering the funds to be guaranteed. Tx confirmation times are a known problem with BTC in terms of the payment acce…

>Credit Card authorization guarantees the funds to the merchant.

It absolutely does not. Even if the customer isn't actively trying to screw you it's still possible for the hold to expire before settlement.

>Signing a bitcoin transaction and broadcasting it to the blockchain does not.

With a reasonable fee it's a far stronger guarantee of settlement than a cc authorization as it's way harder for the customer to reliably cheat you.

>Successful confirmation of the tx on the blockchain does, and to be on the safe side the rule of thumb is to wait for 6 confs on the bitcoin blockchain before considering the funds to be guaranteed.

6 confirmations makes sense if you're selling a house, surely you wouldn't just rely on a cc auth if you were doing that.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#432

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

ryanlol wrote: post #431
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit Card authorization guarantees the funds to the merchant. Signing a bitcoin transaction and broadcasting it to the blockchain does not. Successful confirmation of the tx on the blockchain does, and to be on the safe side the rule of thumb is to wait for 6 confs on the bitcoin blockchain before considering the funds to be guaranteed. Tx confirmation times are a known problem with BTC in terms of the payment acce…

>Credit Card authorization guarantees the funds to the merchant. It absolutely does not. Even if the customer isn't actively trying to screw you it's still possible for the hold to expire before settlement. >Signing a bitcoin transaction and broadcasting it to the blockchain does not. With a reasonable fee it's a far stronger guarantee of settlement than a cc authorization as it's way harder for the customer to relia…

Successful auth is the issuing bank telling the merchant - 'yes, the customer has the funds and the money is yours for the taking via the capture request against this auth.' Which is a GUARANTEE. Yes, as a means of customer protection it expires if the merchant did not request the capture within a certain timeframe which is at least 2 weeks, 4 weeks in most cases.

For digital goods (and POS) this is a non-issue since the capture request is combined with the auth request. For physical goods - well if I'm a customer and the merchant hasn't shipped in 2+ weeks it's fair to me to get the hold removed from the funds my bank GUARANTEED to the merchant.

6 conf is a rule of thumb bitpay (and other bitcoin payment processors that I'm aware of) are following before GUARANTEEING the funds to the merchant. sure, if this is a P2P transaction and I was personally selling you $10 worth of merchandise I'd be ok with 1 conf, when talking 'industrial' scale payment acceptance things work just a little bit different.

So now in this particular case - steam can revoke the license if the payment eventually fails which is precisely why I think this sort of market is perfect for BTC (I commented on this in this thread).

And finally since you're claiming high tx fees are 'a far stronger guarantee of settlement than a cc authorization as it's way harder for the customer to reliably cheat you' - how would you cheat the merchant after the auth (let alone auth/capture) went through?

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#433

Post by ryanlol »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #432
ryanlol wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Credit Card authorization guarantees the funds to the merchant. It absolutely does not. Even if the customer isn't actively trying to screw you it's still possible for the hold to expire before settlement. >Signing a bitcoin transaction and broadcasting it to the blockchain does not. With a reasonable fee it's a far stronger guarantee of settlement than a cc authorization as it's way harder for the customer to relia…

Successful auth is the issuing bank telling the merchant - 'yes, the customer has the funds and the money is yours for the taking via the capture request against this auth.' Which is a GUARANTEE. Yes, as a means of customer protection it expires if the merchant did not request the capture within a certain timeframe which is at least 2 weeks, 4 weeks in most cases. For digital goods (and POS) this is a non-issue since…

>Successful auth is the issuing bank telling the merchant - 'yes, the customer has the funds and the money is yours for the taking via the capture request against this auth.' Which is a GUARANTEE. Yes, as a means of customer protection it expires if the merchant did not request the capture within a certain timeframe which is at least 2 weeks, 4 weeks in most cases.

That's a pretty shitty guarantee when the bank can deny settlement anyways, and FWIW mine seem to expire in 5 days.

>6 conf is a rule of thumb bitpay (and other bitcoin payment processors that I'm aware of) are following before GUARANTEEING the funds to the merchant. sure, if this is a P2P transaction and I was personally selling you $10 worth of merchandise I'd be ok with 1 conf, when talking 'industrial' scale payment acceptance things work just a little bit different.

Unless you're talking about transactions worth tens of thousands of dollars it's simply not worth it for an attacker to even attempt such an attack (not that it'd be very likely work anyway).

And last I checked bitpay is just fine with 1 conf transactions and will happily tank the risk for you. I'd assume the risk is quite small since I haven't ever heard of such an attack actually happening.

>And finally since you're claiming high tx fees are 'a far stronger guarantee of settlement than a cc authorization as it's way harder for the customer to reliably cheat you' - how would you cheat the merchant after the auth (let alone auth/capture) went through?

I could just claim that the transaction was fraudulent. I could contact my bank and forward them a fake email from you claiming that the auth was an accident (done this before, although not with a fake email).

Oh, and most shockingly... I could just use a stolen card!

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#434

Post by shmerl »

iso-8859-1 wrote: post #354
shmerl wrote: post #294

Humble Bundle did in the past, but stopped for some reason. GOG never did so far.

The Hacking books Humble Bundle includes a Bitcoin book, and bitcoin is available for payment also. https://www.humblebundle.com/books/no-starch-hacking-books

Interesting, but I don't see that option in the Humble Store.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#435

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

ryanlol wrote: post #433
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Successful auth is the issuing bank telling the merchant - 'yes, the customer has the funds and the money is yours for the taking via the capture request against this auth.' Which is a GUARANTEE. Yes, as a means of customer protection it expires if the merchant did not request the capture within a certain timeframe which is at least 2 weeks, 4 weeks in most cases. For digital goods (and POS) this is a non-issue since…

>Successful auth is the issuing bank telling the merchant - 'yes, the customer has the funds and the money is yours for the taking via the capture request against this auth.' Which is a GUARANTEE. Yes, as a means of customer protection it expires if the merchant did not request the capture within a certain timeframe which is at least 2 weeks, 4 weeks in most cases. That's a pretty shitty guarantee when the bank can d…

Even if the auth expires (5 days is probably the limit imposed by your payment processor although it's probably sufficient in most cases) - when you are ready to ship and do a capture against it, it'll fail so you know the guarantee provided to you when the original auth went through is no longer there.

bitpay - even if they were happy with 1 conf it would still mean 10 or so minutes before you are guaranteed your funds as a merchant. They are not, however - "When an invoice is complete, it means that BitPay.com has credited the merchant’s account for the invoice. Currently, 6 confirmation blocks on the bitcoin network are required for an invoice to be complete." (https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states) Although the merchants can take the risk of course, and if they are controlling the product after the sale (which is the case with Steam) - they are free to dispatch the goods when they please.

Fraud - sure, you're talking good ol' chargebacks and yes not having to deal with chargebacks is a good selling point for btc payment acceptance. These happen AFTER the settlement however. If the customer convinced their bank to remove the auth hold, then the capture the merchant performs before shipping would fail so you know that the guarantee the issuing bank provided is no longer there.

Again, bitcoin does have it's strengths in terms of being attractive to both the merchant and the buyer, transaction confirmation times is probably the single biggest weakness here especially compared to the way CC processing works.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#436

Post by EdHominem »

Frondo wrote: post #418
EdHominem wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better start coding, except no one will accept your patches to bump up the 21 million bitcoin supply...not so democratic. That's a horrible change. But it's a perfect example of the ultimate democracy. Everyone has the freedom to listen to you, they're choosing not to.

Well done. You've just demonstrated the breach with reality in Bitcoin-land that is most personally irritating to me--the conflation of democracy with consensus/mob rule. Democracy isn't (and never was) just "majority preference that is inferred from behavior". It's the regular, structured process of checking in and putting the rules that affect people up to a group decision, i.e. voting on stuff on a regular basis,…

> Democracy isn't (and never was) just "majority preference that is inferred from behavior". It's the regular, structured process of checking in and putting the rules that affect people up to a group decision, i.e. voting on stuff on a regular basis, and exposing the rules of the system to that process.

You don't seem to understand that it's a P2P system. Which authority are you proposing counts the votes and enacts the policies?

And democracy isn't three wolves voting to eat a sheep. How are you a part of the community that you deserve a vote, even if such a silly thing was possible? Why should you get to vote on what other people are doing?

> Having a regular vote on the # of bitcoins? That'd give it an element of democracy. But bring that up, and you get the kind of nonsense you just gave us.

Because it's literally the worst idea you could have, short of replacing all keys with the number 7. The entire point of Bitcoin is a non-inflating currency. Even if you could change this, which thankfully you cannot, it wouldn't be fair to the people who joined in the beginning.

You're saying you'd rather ruin the system for everyone because you aren't a ruler. Which is precisely why the system was designed to keep people like you from getting any power, ever.

> And it's funny, in bitcoin-land, the very idea of democracy seems really offensive

No, the idea of your idea of a democracy being imposed on people who you're mad at because they don't listen to you is laughable.

You clearly just want to vote for ridiculous things - seemingly to punish people for not inviting you in the beginning.

> No one in bitcoin-land ever comes back to me and says "Yeah, you're right, we should involve more people in the decisions behind how this thing is run."

Of course they don't. And rather than think about this you've decided you're right.

If you want to vote, do it with your feet.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#437

Post by EdHominem »

krapp wrote: post #421
Frondo wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well done. You've just demonstrated the breach with reality in Bitcoin-land that is most personally irritating to me--the conflation of democracy with consensus/mob rule. Democracy isn't (and never was) just "majority preference that is inferred from behavior". It's the regular, structured process of checking in and putting the rules that affect people up to a group decision, i.e. voting on stuff on a regular basis,…

Of course, what anarcho-capitalist cypherpunks mean when they talk about "democracy" is fundamentally different than what everyone else means. From that point of view, consensus as dictated by the free market is probably the only legitimate form of democracy.

How is everyone expressing their choice not a democracy?

What should happen? Who calls for votes? Who counts them, and who forces everyone to change - or not? In a decentralized model how exactly do we add a central authority without centralizing everything?

And further, why would we want to? So that people who aren't involved can have a say? I don't setup a 1-800 number to let people vote on what I watch for movie night - it's only relevant to those who attend.

Similarly, if you don't like Bitcoin then rather than getting involved just to mess with it, why not get involved in something you do like?

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#438

Post by bduerst »

VMG wrote: post #427
bduerst wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protein fit is only useless for the miners, but they have coin rewards on completion, so the work on new blocks isn't useless to them. You do understand how a blockchain works, right?

You picked protein fit as an example of useful PoW. How can you now claim it's useless?

Useful for cancer researchers, not miners.

I can claim it's useless for miners and useful for researchers because I understand blockchains and proteonomics.

Do you understand either, VMG? Because it's fast becoming apparent otherwise.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#439

Post by richardwhiuk »

deepnet wrote: post #398
richardwhiuk wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Nat…

No, crypto is crypto-anarchy does mean cryptography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism

'The "crypto" in crypto-anarchism should not be confused with the use of the prefix "crypto-" to indicate an ideology or system with an intentionally concealed or obfuscated "true nature". For example, some would use the term "crypto-fascist" to describe an individual or organization that holds fascist views and subscribes to fascist doctrine but conceals their agenda so long as these doctrines remain socially unacceptable.'

The crypto in crypto-anarchism is intended to signal a link with cryptography.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#440

Post by lmm »

EdHominem wrote: post #388
lmm wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin has the capability to be the great equalizer, not just across economic bands but also across country borders. That's backwards. Bitcoin is directly controlled by the owners of property (miners), in proportion to how much they own.

That'd be a proof-of-stake coin. They exist. You're thinking of in proportion to their percentage of the network mining power. Which for a pool (cartel?) can be sizable. But that it is more akin to controlling the post-office than controlling the bank. People can be inconvenienced but not stolen from (except in certain cases with confederates of the post-master) and those can be guarded against more easily than avoid…

> those can be guarded against more easily than avoiding phishing email from "your bank".

What risk measure are you using there, and what ease measure? E.g. waiting for 6 blocks for transactions to settle (best practice AIUI) would be a serious inconvenience when e.g. paying at a restaurant.

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