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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#221

Post by seanalltogether »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #203

Cool. This type of market is perfect for Bitcoin: 1. worldwide - which gives them large customer base without access to other methods of payments (unlike US where it's really hard to convince customers to use BTC instead of Credit Cards); 2. Digital goods with licenses that can be revoked - so the merchant doesn't have to worry (too much) about confirmations/double spends and is able to "ship the goods" instantly. Th…

Does steam have to worry about transaction confirmation? I would've assumed that bitpay guarantees the funds to their partners regardless of any potential bitcoin shenanigans.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#222

Post by cloudjacker »

andypants wrote: post #209
cloudjacker wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin may or may not succeed Thats what people were saying in 2012, 2013 The network is working fine. This is success. What is your metric of success in this statement? I find it counterintuitive.

They are waiting for bitcoin to become the number #1 currency. Just like people joke about 'the year of linux'. Guess what, linux is still around. It doesn't need to be #1. There may never be a 'year of linux', but it doesn't mean linux is a failure.

I see, I don't see it being successful at that, in trade. I see it's blockchain and consensus model being used as settlement on a broad and broader scale.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#223

Post by rhino369 »

mbmott wrote: post #148
aliakhtar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't use cars because they have a hard on for internal combustion engines. They use cars to go from one place to another, i.e their utility. The utility of bitcoin is its TPS rate.

Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. Like I said, Bitcoin will scale like the internet scaled which is in direct proportion to demand. Blocks aren't often full and if you are in a hurry then you need to pay 10 or 20 cents to prioritize your transaction.

>Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency.

But it's hard to get and hard to use. It's useful for a pseudo-anonymous transfer for value.

Unless I'm doing something illegal, Visa is a better option.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#224

Post by arca_vorago »

brighton36 wrote: post #155
CaptainZapp wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend a good introductory book into the blockchain?

There are no efficiencies to blockchain. That technology is 100% hype

Blockchain isn't about "effeciencies" anyway. It's about a verifiable record, and the key is that it's a decentralized verifiable record. I would appreciate further elaboration about this "hype".

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#225

Post by vectorpush »

stegosaurus wrote: post #141

I find the vitriol towards Bitcoin kind of odd. If I posted an article about Linux 4.1 or something, I wouldn't expect to see comments saying 'meanwhile, I used Windows yesterday, and played GTA5, and it was good'. What gives? Are there forums in which people have this sort of reaction to, I dunno, HTML5? From some of the posts here you would think that it's IED control software.

I'll offer a controversial explanation: bitcoin enthusiasts have exhausted most of the oxygen in the room with regard to rational bitcoin discussion.

The never-ending adulation of bitcoin as the greatest invention since the internet, the hyperbolic claims that bitcoin will do things like revolutionize payments, end global war, eliminate the need for banks, liberate the people from bondage, the litany of bitcoin and blockchain companies making extraordinary claims while consistently under-delivering or outright scamming customers, the warped world-view where communities of impoverished people who can barely meet their daily needs and have markedly poor computer literacy and limited access to computers and internet will be lifted out of poverty by banking with bitcoin, the constant dismissal of bitcoin skeptics as "not understanding" bitcoin, the self-aggrandizing elevation of satoshi and bitcoin programmers as programming prodigies, the condescendingly absurd notion that detractors, the banks and the governments are afraid of bitcoin or afraid of the bitcoin money revolution, the tone-deaf advocacy of bitcoin as a safer method of payment than credit cards, the general refusal to acknowledge bitcoin's practical challenges as real problems (non-technical people being scammed or permanently losing their money due to data-loss, theft, misconfiguration of software, sending bitcoin to the wrong address, downloading a scam wallet), the oversaturation of the underwhelming "x but with bitcoin" formula that pops up every couple weeks... and much more.

As heated, vitriolic and personal as linux discussions can get, its taken for granted that everyone is at least operating in the same objective reality (systemd vs upstart, gnome vs unity, mir vs wayland, even windows vs linux), but a large swath of bitcoin enthusiasts look at bitcoin as something that eclipses every other technical topic in importance to the point where it comes off as quasi-religious.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#226

Post by aianus »

flatline wrote: post #113
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.

They don't accept bitcoin directly, they instead accept fiat from Bitpay on behalf of people who wish to pay in bitcoin. It is an important distinction. On the one hand this makes a lot of sense for Steam, it reduces the up-front overhead and risk of accepting digital currencies and I would imagine it offloads the onus of AML/KYC compliance to Bitpay. On the other hand it is hardly a ringing endorsement of bitcoin it…

"They don't accept CNY directly, they instead accept USD from their merchant bank on behalf of people who wish to pay in CNY"

This is a pointless distinction.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#227

Post by arca_vorago »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #127
arca_vorago wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you my personal issues with bitcoin. 1) I'm still bitter I threw all mine away. I had a few hundred in the early days and thought, "this isnt going anywhere".... 2) I'm one of HN's resident conspiracy theorists, for lack of a better term, and bitcoin can be seen as a threat to freedom because for all the awesome things it is, it is not anonymous . This may seem innocuous at first, but if you subscribe to t…

Can you recommend a good introductory book into the blockchain?

I actually haven't read much more than academic papers, but I do plan on ordering this book: http://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Revolution-Technology-Chang...

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#228

Post by arielpts »

ryanlol wrote: post #198
transfire wrote: post #89

I thought Bitcoin had run into a fundamental problem that transactions were now taking hours co complete. And that an internal battle among developers on the fix remained unresolved. Did I miss something?

Because credit card payments and wire transfers take less than hours to complete?

Yes, credit card payments, CNP, usually takes seconds to complete. I may take days (or month depends on the country) to settle.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#229

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

seanalltogether wrote: post #221
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #203

Cool. This type of market is perfect for Bitcoin: 1. worldwide - which gives them large customer base without access to other methods of payments (unlike US where it's really hard to convince customers to use BTC instead of Credit Cards); 2. Digital goods with licenses that can be revoked - so the merchant doesn't have to worry (too much) about confirmations/double spends and is able to "ship the goods" instantly. Th…

Does steam have to worry about transaction confirmation? I would've assumed that bitpay guarantees the funds to their partners regardless of any potential bitcoin shenanigans.

Looking at bitpay's docs (this is a pretty typical setup), merchant is getting IPNs (aka Webhooks) with invoice statuses based on what is happening with that payment on the Bitcoin network - https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states.

So yes, as a merchant it's up to you if you want to wait until the funds are there (invoice status == 'Complete') or ship as soon as the payment is detected ('Paid' status).

Bitpay will obv guarantee for the funds to be there when status moves to 'Complete' otherwise they are risking to get hit with a double spend.

Re: Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases

#230

Post by andypants »

seanalltogether wrote: post #221
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #203

Cool. This type of market is perfect for Bitcoin: 1. worldwide - which gives them large customer base without access to other methods of payments (unlike US where it's really hard to convince customers to use BTC instead of Credit Cards); 2. Digital goods with licenses that can be revoked - so the merchant doesn't have to worry (too much) about confirmations/double spends and is able to "ship the goods" instantly. Th…

Does steam have to worry about transaction confirmation? I would've assumed that bitpay guarantees the funds to their partners regardless of any potential bitcoin shenanigans.

No, because valve can always remove your purchases from your steam library if necessary.
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