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Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

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Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#271

Post by malloryerik »

totalZero wrote: post #267
derriz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? The volatility is a HUGE problem for bitcoin as a currency. If I run a small business, accepting payment in bitcoin just creates risk. The state of my business not only depends on the quality and success of my product/service but also on the volatility of bitcoin because by accepting bitcoin I am forced to effectively take a long position on BTC. The price could crash by 25% before I sell the bitcoin and now I've…

How does one take a short position in Bitcoin?

If the futures markets at the CBOT or CME attract volume, you could use those. Otherwise, you'd have to do it over-the-counter. Borrow a bitcoin from someone and turn it into real money. When you have to repay, if BTC is down, you'll buy back a BTC at a profit. If it's up, you'll have to buy back at a loss.

Note that this gives you a maximum gain of whatever BTC/USD is today (assuming you denominate in greenbacks), while upside risk is theoretically unlimited.

Of course the lender has to trust or be ensured (or insured) that you will repay.

There must be people using Ethereum contracts to make options on BTC, and maybe trying to minimize counterparty risk through the judicious use of open-sourced smart contracts and digital collateral? Anyone know of interesting cases?

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#272

Post by TD-Linux »

Jach wrote: post #223
jordigh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

10 minutes isn't really the drop of a hat. But why do you need your first confirmation in approximately the next 10 minutes so badly anyway, especially when it shows up in the mempool pretty much immediately? I paid around 20 cents on an approximately $200 transaction a couple weekends ago, it got verified after about 4 hours but I was expecting longer, it would have been fine. In the last 24 hours, 36,332 transactio…

Just knowing it's in your mempool isn't a very strong guarantee that the payment will go through. Probably fine for reversible digital goods, but not much else. Some systems pay miners to look at their block templates to get a better assurance it will confirm (and that it won't be replaced), but it's still not very good, and given that Lightning is now running on mainnet there's little value in continuing in that direction.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#273

Post by stephengillie »

tbabb wrote: post #236
ftlio wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can create a scarce token with all the qualities you desire in like 5 minutes. Creating 'internet money' with a stable value and network of potential transactees probably looks exactly like Bitcoin's development though.

Bitcoin is not set up to ever be "stable" by any definition. Real currency has a federal reserve to balance supply against demand and keep the value steady. BTC has entirely demand-driven value-- which is precisely as steady and predictable as the human mind.

Looking at the Coinbase graphs reminds me of reading CPU charts, comparing resource use between 3 web servers. Sometimes one coin will spike or dip independently, indicating higher utilization of one coin over the other 2 - an arbitrage opportunity; other times all 3 coins see a matching dip or raise, likely indicating a systematic cause.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#274

Post by stephengillie »

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.

It was eye-opening to realize people buy stocks for 2 reasons:

1. Dividend payments

2. The expectation that someone else will want the stock more in the future. (Often for reason #1.)

Financially, there is no other logical reason to possess stocks. It was part of the larger lesson that companies often perform irrational actions because they are made primarily out of people.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#275

Post by stephengillie »

drabiega wrote: post #67
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…

Where then, would you draw the line between a currency and a non-currency asset?

Everything is a currency, if you barter hard enough.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#276

Post by corford »

gruez wrote: post #266
jameskegel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>IOATA and their overrun nodes IOTA is a Tangle[1], which is coordinated[2] flow, similar to a Directed Acyclic Graph[3]. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "overrun nodes" but by virtue of how the network operates, this should not be an issue unless everyone is sticking with only the default nodes in their configuration, but that delves into a conversation of programmer vs user error that isn't pertinent to thi…

it's easy to solve scaling (and the double spend problem) when you're trusting a central entity (the coordinator).

I believe the coordinator is slated to be removed sometime next year.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#277

Post by seanwilson »

vertex-four wrote: post #197
runeks wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed there are clearing protocols on top of Bitcoin, which can reduce fee-paying to only occur upon depositing and redemption. But the Bitcoin blockchain is still limited to ~20 million of such transactions per month[1]. Only if we remove the withdrawal transactions from the equation, and start trading unconfirmed transactions as regular bitcoins (confirmed transactions), can we get around this limitation (such tha…

A Lightning Network transaction results in one of two things - a proof that a certain amount of bitcoins can be withdrawn at any time (minus some delay), or a proof of cheating. Surely a proof that you can withdraw a certain amount of bitcoins is more-or-less equivalent to that many bitcoins, and therefore any rational actor - including your suppliers - should accept it as such? This isn't equivalent to unconfirmed t…

I tried a few times to read about the Lightning Network and it seems complicated to understand and implement. I'm not an expert at all but it seems like a flaw in the Bitcoin protocol that you have to build something like this on top.

Are there other cryptocoins that are built on protocols that avoid having to have this extra layer on top to make them scalable? I imagine the more complexity that is added, the more scope there is for security, implementation and scalability issues so you want to keep things simple.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#278

Post by tim333 »

totalZero wrote: post #267
derriz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? The volatility is a HUGE problem for bitcoin as a currency. If I run a small business, accepting payment in bitcoin just creates risk. The state of my business not only depends on the quality and success of my product/service but also on the volatility of bitcoin because by accepting bitcoin I am forced to effectively take a long position on BTC. The price could crash by 25% before I sell the bitcoin and now I've…

How does one take a short position in Bitcoin?

IG will do it sometimes. (https://www.ig.com/au/forex/markets-forex/bitcoin-1)

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#279

Post by lz400 »

lifty wrote: post #163
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's better than being on a trajectory where BTC hitting $1m is a real possibility. That world will be terrifying, and it's important for us to think about ways of mitigating or stopping it.

Can you go into more detail as to why that world would be terrifying? Is it because the implications predicted by orthodox monetary theory?

Because if nowadays we consider inequality a problem and the 1% holding half of the wold's wealth obscene, in bitcoin it's orders of magnitude worse, and a lot of that early wealth is in the hands of people that from what I've seen I hope they never get that kind of power and influence. Hell, I like Satoshi but I wouldn't want a single person to own 5% of the global wealth.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#280

Post by conception »

totalZero wrote: post #267
derriz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? The volatility is a HUGE problem for bitcoin as a currency. If I run a small business, accepting payment in bitcoin just creates risk. The state of my business not only depends on the quality and success of my product/service but also on the volatility of bitcoin because by accepting bitcoin I am forced to effectively take a long position on BTC. The price could crash by 25% before I sell the bitcoin and now I've…

How does one take a short position in Bitcoin?

Most major exchanges offer margin trading.
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