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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#131

Post by VMG »

chii wrote: post #69
StavrosK wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just asked for a refund, because the game was terrible. I asked for the refund to be sent to my wallet, there was an option to get Bitcoin back. I think that, for the wallet, they refund you the game's store price.

this seems like a good way to launder bitcoins. Unless if you got back _the same_ coins you spent - i guess steam holding on to your coins for 2hrs~ isn't that big of a risk, rather than immediately swapping it out for cash.

Steam isn't holding coins in any case, it's Bitpay. They have probably figured this out.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#132

Post by anu_gupta »

lsadam0 wrote: post #62
pjc50 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your money is exactly as secure as your private keys, and if they are stolen there is basically no prospect of getting it back. "Be your own bank" implies "be your own security division", which very few people are qualified to do.

If I leave cash on the street should I expect it to be safe? Is that a deep security issue? You implied there were deep fundamental flaws in BTC security, but your response shows nothing of the sort. Your 'deep flaw' is 'you have to protect your private keys'. You are describing a UX flaw, and I would agree with that. Objectively, you have exposed no 'deep security issues'.

> If I leave cash on the street should I expect it to be safe? Is that a deep security issue?

Exactly. This is why, where there are trusted and easy to access alternatives, people generally don't possess and carry around large amounts of cash.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#133

Post by kalleboo »

mbmott wrote: post #87
aliakhtar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a lot of us understand the underlying tech, and how bullshit it is that a $100 cell phone has a higher TPS rate than the entire bitcoin network, which consumes more electricity than a small country (and all the CO2 emissions that go with it)

A $100 cellphone isn't a decentralized peer to peer network. You are comparing apples to nose-hairs. Bitcoin will scale in the same way the internet scaled... slowly and then suddenly.

The Internet scaled by adding users and nodes. Bitcoin's transaction limit is coded into the protocol.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#134

Post by enraged_camel »

lsadam0 wrote: post #58
joosters wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve doesn't handle any bit coins.

Ok, so? Bitcoin is an accepted payment method. Why should you care how exactly they handle processing of it? The only measure of success here is how much people do or do not use it. Are you honestly trying to argue against their acceptance by nitpicking the details of the backend implementation? 99.9% of people don't care.

>>The only measure of success here is how much people do or do not use it.

No, that's your only measure of success. In order for Bitcoin to succeed as a viable payment platform, businesses also need to adopt it wholly, which means actually conducting business in Bitcoin rather than converting it to a "real" currency as soon as possible.

Basically, if they are treating it as hot potato, that means they see it as too unstable and risky.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#136

Post by nxzero »

StavrosK wrote: post #12

I was really surprised that the announcement that Steam may support Bitcoin made waves a while ago, yet the announcement that it actually does did not. I used it to buy a (horrible) game last night, and it worked beautifully. Contrast with PayPal, with which Steam is always confused about where I am and whether it should charge me in GBP or EUR. I'm never not using Bitcoin again.

Your use "never not" is confusing; meaning to me, "I'm always going to use Bitcoin in the future, and never going to use anything else to buy on Steam." - would be more clear.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#137

Post by Cyph0n »

germanier wrote: post #123
Cyph0n wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your TND, and then I give you BTC which I've purchased. I will also buy your BTC, but I'll likely rely on BTC purchased from foreign exchanges. You then use that BTC for whatever. The problem is that it becomes difficult to bring in casual customers due to the overhead introduced by Bitcoin, as Bitcoin is virtually unknown in Tunisia. A common issue in Tunisia especially is sending money to relatives in France…

> I take your TND, and then I give you BTC which I've purchased. In that case you end up holding TND and need to purchase the bitcoin to give to your customers in another currency. You would have an easier result if you just directly exchanged TND to EUR without putting BTC in between. Likely that's about as legal as your solution. Just because at some point the value is hold in BTC doesn't mean currency controls cea…

I agree, it's quite risky and can easily be shut down by the authorities if they catch wind of it. I think the simplest way to avoid the risk is to setup a decentralized exchange that connects buyers to sellers. But that means it becomes much more difficult to take a cut, as people will just meet face-to-face.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#138

Post by mbmott »

sievebrain wrote: post #122
mbmott wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bitcoin network works perfectly fine and always has. The issue you are referring to was during a DOS attack on the network, which still wasn't an issue if you paid slightly higher fees to prioritize your transaction. The developer split on the blocksize increase was pretty heated for a while, but has largely blown over due to Bitcoin still working and the sky refusing to fall as some predicted. However, scaling i…

If Bitcoin users were naturally making more and more payments or there were more and more users, and then it ran up against the block size limit, how would you know whether there was a DOS attack or not? Wouldn't it look like a permanent DOS attack? Did it blow over because the block size limit was increased?

I call it a DOS attack because blocks aren't regularly full anymore and the transaction data showed that the flood of transactions were "peeling chains", meaning they mostly had the same source. There is blockchain data to back this up.

The blocksize hasn't been increased yet. It blew over due to wallets improving their fee support. If you are in a hurry and need quick confirmations you increase your fee by 10 cents, but if the transaction doesn't need priority you may wait for quite a while.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#139

Post by WJW »

Cyph0n wrote: post #129
WJW wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't reply to Cyphons coment for some reason, but there seems to be a problem with setting up the trade he describes. If it's succesful, he will then be stuck with a large amount of TND, which he has no use for and, due to the currency controls, can't convert to a currency that is useful for him. That is leaving out the point that both the operators and the clients are willfully circumventing the law, which most g…

Actually I'm a Tunisian, so the TND will be useful in the long run as an investment. But that still prevents me from reinvesting it into the business i.e. buying more BTC. One way is to simply buy BTC from local sellers who perhaps bring BTC from outside the country. They take a cut and I add a markup before selling it back. But there's another advantage I have. I'm currently residing outside the country, and if I do…

Good luck! I hope you find a way to improve our world.
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