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Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

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Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#111

Post by ajross »

vxNsr wrote: post #73
epicide wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: even if a currency is only good for exchanging for other currencies, doesn't that still make it a currency? In other words, even if you can't go buy clothing or games or hosting with BTC, doesn't the fact that you can exchange it for $LOCAL_CURRENCY (which can be used to buy those things) give it value? Basically, a meta-currency or currency of currencies, if you will. Edit: I realize we are saying…

Stocks are a thing because no one thinks of them as liquid assets. Steam is making the same argument about bitcoin essentially.

Stocks are an order of magnitude more liquid than Bitcoin, though

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#112

Post by lifty »

The current situation is quite terrible, and the hype that lead to the current price is not doing Bitcoin any favors. I would have hoped that it wouldn’t get so much attention before it gets a chance to improve the underlying tech more. That being said, the lightning network will be ready soon and perhaps that will improve the situation. The following is a demo doing a lightning payment: https://youtu.be/a73Gz3Tvx3k , and it is super fast.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#114

Post by deadmetheny »

i_cant_speel wrote: post #49
colordrops wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is what will ultimately bring Bitcoin down People have been saying that for years. It serves purposes other than buying and selling goods, and in fact almost no one uses it to buy things.

What other purposes is it used for?

Buying drugs and ransomware.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#115

Post by darpa_escapee »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #85
blibble wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cardholders are not liable for unauthorised transactions by merchants any merchant that commits that sort of fraud repeatedly will have their account terminated

Thankfully we have nice companies like equifax which help secure our details /s.

Online wallets and exchanges are similar points of failure. Many users have uploaded their picture IDs, banking and tax information to sites like LocalBitcoins.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#116

Post by DSMan195276 »

bigtunacan wrote: post #45
Klathmon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "$20 transaction fee" was an absolute top, and when that happened it was the single most congested the bitcoin network has ever been. It's nowhere near that right now. The total cost for your "median" transaction right now (at 226 bytes) is about $4.30 USD (at 150 sat/byte). Even if you double that to 300 sat/byte you are still at ~$9. Edit: I'm not saying even $4 fees are okay, just pointing out that it's not $2…

How are these transaction fee amounts even determined? With something like credit cards, PayPal, or EFT the fees are deterministic. With Bitcoin it seems fees are both ridiculously high, plus I can't even tell what I am going to be charged?

I think it's easiest to think of Bitcoin TX fees as a bribe to the miners to include your transaction in a block sooner then other transactions that have a lower fee attached. You get to choose the fee that you provide to the miner.

The problem is that there are now so many transactions that are attempting to get through (And there is a maximum number of transactions that can be placed in a single block) that miners can be more selective. At this point your transaction is unlikely to get through without a minimum fee/bribe being provided because there are enough transactions with fees already at or above that level.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#117

Post by masklinn »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #52

I can see the headlines now... "Bitcoin running out of steam?"

Not being used is the logical end of it when we know there's a fixed available amount[0]. That means bitcoin is intrinsically deflationary, and at there's absolutely no reason to use them: they'll be worth more tomorrow than today, and next week than tomorrow. Until everything grinds to a halt and crashes down.

[0] in which sense it is very different from gold, which kept increasing in amount, just (mostly) slowly

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#118

Post by phaser »

I'm here to say the problems in selling games for Bitcoin are not the same for microtransactions.

I'm the original developer of Bitquest[1], where we used to process hundreds of micropayments smaller than 1 cent each day using 0 fee Bitcoin transactions.

When the blocks started to fill up we had to move all transactions off-chain except when players send money to the game and cashing out.

From the player's perspective, it's hard to justify paying $2 each time get Bitcoin in/out of the game. On the other side, there's no cut for Apple, Google, et al. who charge for as much as 30% cut for micro transactions.

I'm now working on a similar game[2] that will take advantage of Segwit and Lightning Network. There's still miner fees involved to send money in and opening a payment channel, however there's no cut to a payment processor and the associated problems of compliance.

I'm not saying it's perfect but there's still important advantages on Cryptocurrency for game transactions and I'm confident that Steam and others will get back to it after it's infancy.

[1] https://github.com/bitquest/bitquest [2] https://hammerco.in

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#119

Post by spiznnx »

heifetz wrote: post #35

why are transaction costs so high? I thought one of the selling points was that the transaction cost is negligible because miners main incentive comes from mining new bitcoins?

Transactions take up space on the chain, and the chain only writes at about 1.6 kBps (1MiB every 10 minutes). People therefore must compete on fees to be included on the chain.

Bitcoin doesn't scale in its current form [0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#120

Post by disordinary »

i_cant_speel wrote: post #49
colordrops wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is what will ultimately bring Bitcoin down People have been saying that for years. It serves purposes other than buying and selling goods, and in fact almost no one uses it to buy things.

What other purposes is it used for?

Right now it's only use apart from being an investment medium is to convert currency to alt coins, alt coins is where the innovation is and where the real use of distributed ledgers come into play.
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