I wonder how many bitcoins Steam has, and how many of those they've even cashed out on.
Realistically, they won't be storing any bitcoins, they will immediately convert it to USD.
Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
131–140 of 412 posts
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#132I'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 perspectiv…
do you know of any current implementations of lightning on the actual blockchain and not testnet (BTC or LTC)? thanks!
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically they can be 'returned' by using a higher fee to move the coins to a different address making the original transaction un-confirmable.
Unless "replace by fee" is opted into, most nodes won't allow a second transaction to replace a previous one. Which means it's a gamble if that will ever work.
If the transaction hasn't been committed (etched into the blockchain), then isn't there a financial advantage to accepting the highest fee transaction?
The protocol doesn't matter, mempools aren't validated or shared[+], and so the validity of the chain isn't challenged by processing the higher fee.
So given that the bitcoin network is designed to be operated by greedy miners, surely one would break with "tradition" and process the second?
You might have to dig to find a route to those nodes but it should surely be possible.
[+] They're not shared as in shared-state, i.e. sync'ed.
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
>not easy enough to arbitrage between exchanges doesn't tether fix this?
for arbitrage you want to move all currencies, not just one. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets for example, bitcoin is now huge on bithumb, I'd buy it at bitstamp and sell it for 10% more, and repeat. given the slow transaction times, huge fees, large mempool, this is impossible to do. exchanges also ban you for trying to do arbitrage too, so there's a risk of losing all the funds.
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Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you make a bitcoin transaction, it gets put into a "mempool". Basically you send your TX to a node, that shares it with other nodes on the network, and they all hold it in memory. Once a block is found, the miner that found the block will pull as many transactions as possible from the mempool and put them into that block and sign it on the blockchain forever. Since TX fees go to miners, they are incentivized to…
> Once a block is found, the miner that found the block will pull as many transactions as possible from the mempool and put them into that block and sign it on the blockchain forever. Might be a nitpick, but you mean the miner puts as many high value transactions as they can fit into a block and then searches for a valid hash?
Yeah that's more correct.
Technically the miner needs to know what they are going to be including in a block when they begin trying to find a valid hash, but for the sake of explanation I generally switch it around for simplicity.
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#136I posted this as an Ask HN, but this might be interesting here. It's sort of off-topic, but in this case there's not much to say about Steam dropping Bitcoin anyway. Maybe it'll hover near the bottom: What should we do about the destabilizing potential of Bitcoin? There are two facts about Bitcoin worth worrying about: 1. There is no upper bound on the price 2. Everyone who thought the price won't continue to exponen…
Why would it be a 'relief' if the price crashes back to $1K?
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#137Makes business and technological sense. Even the true believers have largely switched to advocating the store-of-value/digital gold model of bitcoin. We're absolutely in a bitcoin/cryptocurrency mania. Unfortunately, stating that is much easier than predicting what will happen next.
>Even the true believers have largely switched to advocating the store-of-value/digital gold model of bitcoin. Which is absolutely insane. What's the point of a currency if you can't use it for transactions? Store-of-value? What value?
> What value?
$13K of value, and counting.
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#138Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#139a) they should be using segwit addresses
b) they have the option of using a payment processor that handles ALL OF THE PROBLEMS THEY DESCRIBED on the backend, behind the scenes
c) switch to a different blockchain. they already built the rails, different trains can run on them already.
d) bitcoin futures start trading on Sunday, its an easy way to hedge volatility, so there goes that argument. Professionals in multinational companies know what these are used for.
Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
>However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the transaction fees have gone up in the meantime. That is creating unsustainable problems for the customer support and makes BTC unusable for actual payments. This is precisely what Lightning aims to solve, and at least anecdotally so far, has done so in the case of LT…
Having used bitcoins as money, I really want the confirmation times and transaction fees to go back to what they were a year or two ago. I keep hearing that this mythical lightning will fix things, and I sure hope it does. I want internet money. I want to be able to send money to anyone, anywhere in the world, at the drop of a hat, as easy as email. I don't care about speculation or getting rich or avoiding taxes or…
We've mostly had this for years, in the form of PayPal. Your ID even is your email.
The issues with PayPal have mostly been interfacing with fiat currency, which any system will have to deal with, and transaction fees, which any system will have.
The real problem IMO is the lack of a de-facto service that everyone all around the world has, and we're kind of in this position: https://xkcd.com/927/