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'50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

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Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#91

Post by reaperducer »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #77
reaperducer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can pay for anything in the economy right now with BTC. It's called a crypto debit card... look it up. Not every organization accepts debit cards. Look it up.

I don't think i've ever run into one here in the US that didn't let me use my crypto card. I don't even remember the last time i carried cash?

I'm in the U.S., too. You must not go very many interesting places, or find yourself in very many interesting situations.

I guess maybe a crypto debit card is good for people who lead plain lives. Like hanging around town and going to the movies and the candy store. But I require both cash and a real credit card for my life. Debit cards have failed me too often.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#92

Post by hypertele-Xii »

netheril96 wrote: post #76
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy TF2 keys and trade them to another account? Or CSGO skins? It's incredibly liquid and there are third party marketplaces for cashing out

They are not more liquid than BTC itself. Why not just sell the BTC directly?

I guess games and cosmetics sell easier than crypto scams.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#93

Post by felipellrocha »

rosndo wrote: post #88
lokar wrote: post #82

There seems to be a basic misunderstanding on the part of the pro-btc ppl here all saying "how is that fraud?" or "how is that steams problem?" If you run a business that can be used in a money laundering scheme, even if you are not a victim, you have a legal responsibility to try to limit/prevent that actually. The crypto crowd may not like that, but it's not up to them.

The basic misunderstanding is on your part. “Money laundering” wasn’t mentioned by anyone but you. Stop inventing things. This is about valve getting fucked because they were accepting bitcoin payments with zero confirmations.

Why take it personally? They brought up an important issue.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#94

Post by lokar »

rosndo wrote: post #88
lokar wrote: post #82

There seems to be a basic misunderstanding on the part of the pro-btc ppl here all saying "how is that fraud?" or "how is that steams problem?" If you run a business that can be used in a money laundering scheme, even if you are not a victim, you have a legal responsibility to try to limit/prevent that actually. The crypto crowd may not like that, but it's not up to them.

The basic misunderstanding is on your part. “Money laundering” wasn’t mentioned by anyone but you. Stop inventing things. This is about valve getting fucked because they were accepting bitcoin payments with zero confirmations.

Did you even read the other threads? It comes up almost every time.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#95

Post by anonymousab »

allisdust wrote: post #33
AlexandrB wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraudulent payments are very much possible in the "buying stuff with a stolen credit card" kind of way. This is a much more common type of fraud than the "double spend" attacks Bitcoin protects against. Bitcoin is only resilient to fraud only if you define fraud as "violating the rules of the blockchain". Any definition of fraud that involves meatspace is possible.

Stolen credit cards are a problem for the merchant because the charges could be reversed by the bank and merchant will incur the loss. I don't see how that is even remotely possible with Crypto. How did Steam lose money ? My guess is they might be accepting it through some payment provider (so not a true crypto) who has in their T&C to be able to reverse transactions (which must be happening in Cash on the Steam faci…

> Stolen credit cards are a problem for the merchant because

Because they don't want to process illegal transactions with illegally acquired money, because they don't want to abide or facilitate criminal conduct, wherever possible. Life and business is not merely nor always about the potential to lose money through legal ramifications.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#96

Post by pfooti »

abi wrote: post #80
IgorPartola wrote: post #15

At this point is BTC a good idea? Does it actually provide any damn value at all at a macro level?

Say you're a Ukrainian fleeing refuge and you want store your life's savings somewhere safe. Pretty damn useful there. If you don't want to deal with the price fluctuations of BTC or ETH, buy stablecoins instead.

there's also banks.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#97

Post by ike0790 »

bitcoin should be seen in the mainstream as a universal payment network. I believe its best use case for the average(non-cypherpunk libertarian) person/company is to accept it by using a service that automatic exchanges it for dollars on their end.

For example, someone in africa could pay .001 BTC($40 currently) for a game and all steam would see on their end is a debit transaction for $40(cash not bitcoin) in their account. It allows for bitcoin to be held by those who don't mind the volatile nature of its market value, AND allows for those wanting to accept without holding it in the short term. Win Win for both parties :)

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#98

Post by hashimotonomora »

georgyo wrote: post #23
hashimotonomora wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Walmart compare to that regarding purchases with ill-gotten cash?

Cash is completely fungible because there is no clear trace of money from one person to the next. If someone steals 100k of cash, there is a very low probability that the serial number of those bills were recorded somewhere. And even if they were, you couldn't easily trace the money though complex systems. Bitcoin on the other hand is a complete and open ledger. When these large heists that constantly happen, it is t…

The fact that it’s difficult or expensive to track does not mean it cannot be. Technically it’s possible to force every cash handling business to scan (just like you scan an UPC) each bill.

Re: '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin for payments

#99

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #79
TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that doesn't make any sense. The 'fraud' in your scenario and where the point of contention lies is between the the credit card company and the exchange where it was onramped. There's no way the exchange is then going to go through the effort to track the btc to steam and say 'Hey, that transaction that didn't come from our exchange wallet was fraud i want the BTC back.' Also - That's just like fraud with extra steps…

Perhaps stolen credit cards have checks in place to immediately flag them as fraudulent?

yeah - Some. crypto companies have that too now though. Most exchanges have haulted the ability to buy crypto with credit altogether.

But Crypto.com allows you to buy up to $30 worth of crypto with a credit card and cards online are pennies on the dollar online if bought in bulk.

An astute con artist would recongnise that the only real verifications credit cards have at their disposal is geolocation and shopping habits. So if one were to buy CC online, create a bot to enter the details onto the crypto.com exchange, route the traffic through a VPN using the CC address as a base, send the $30 worth of crypto you bought off exchange and into a wallet, using Tor and some clean Eth you bought in cash to pay the gas fees, Wrap the BTC in WBTC, throw it on uniswap, swap for some privacy coin, use that privacy coin to send to another wallet within that private ecosystem so the headers on the node are lost and bam. You've got some clean crypto that you've fraudulently bought with a credit card but can never be claimed as fraud!

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