Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

steamcommunity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 412 posts

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#291

Post by librvf »

namelost wrote: post #288
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…

The volatility of Bitcoin has been decreasing over time.

It's still far too volatile to be a reasonable currency.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#293

Post by oculusthrift »

cgmg wrote: post #137
Havoc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

enron had a lot of 'value' too.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#294

Post by msolujic »

phaser wrote: post #118

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 perspectiv…

Ha you considered using GAME coin instead? https://gamecredits.com I is leading solution for gaming ecosystem Disclosure: I am part of the GameCredits team

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#295

Post by topmonk »

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?

Bitfinex offers this.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#296

Post by librvf »

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?

When it hits all of:

    Acceptability
    Durability
    Divisibility
    Stability
    Portability
    (Elasticity)
If you can't spend it easily, it's not a (functioning) currency.

If it spoils or decays within your lifetime it's not a currency.

If it's not something you can divide in order to make payments of a more-or-less arbitrary amount, it's not a currency.

If you can't predict how much of the asset you will need to pay your bills next month, it's not a currency

If you can't bring it with you to the place where the exchange takes place, it's not a currency.

If you can't obtain capital investment in a currency because the currency itself is more valuable than anything you could produce, then it's not a (good long term) currency. This last one is in parens because it one only matters in a growing economy. A deflationary currency can still otherwise function as a viable medium of exchange, but eventually, lack of availability for new entrants will mean that entrepreneurs will begin looking to do business in alternate currencies.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#298

Post by librvf »

stephengillie wrote: post #275
drabiega wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Everything is a currency, if you barter hard enough.

Barter is, by definition, an exchange of goods without using money. In other words if you have to barter to get rid of it, it's not currency.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#299

Post by librvf »

patmcc wrote: post #215
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #91

I 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…

>>>2. Everyone who thought the price won't continue to exponentially increase was wrong So far. Want to bet on the price of bitcoin in 1/5/10/25/100 years?

I predict the price will continue to rise on average for the next 1-5 years, although it might start slowing. At some point between 10 and 25 years, Bitcoin will experience a major crash. Whether it stabilizes into some sort of useful medium of exchange alongside competing cryptocurrencies is hard to predict. It might survive in a limited role or a limited market, the value of which is very hard to imagine at this point.

In 100 years I think bitcoin will be worthless.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#300

Post by ArchD »

vxNsr wrote: post #3

It's for the same reason that no one wanted to touch zimbabwe dollar back in 2007, if the value of the medium of exchange differs from breakfast to lunch it's not really a good medium of exchange. Doesn't matter if value is appreciating or depreciating, currency needs to have a reasonably stable value to be useful.

That's what bitcoin futures can be used for, to hedge your BTC position, and you don't have to wait for 10 minutes for your trade to complete.

For example, if you own 5 BTC and want to hedge the USD value of your portfolio against BTCUSD fluctuation, you can short 1 CME bitcoin contract (http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoi...). If BTCUSD decreases, the USD value of your 5 BTC decreases while you gain the same amount of USD on the short futures position, so you have no net profit or loss in terms of USD. If you acquire a bigger BTC position, you can maintain your hedge by increasing your futures short position.

For a big merchant like Steam, at least theoretically, they could accept BTC directly and hedge their BTC position using the futures. Although the granularity of 5 BTC is rather high, for a high-volume merchant that can increase or decrease their BTC holdings relatively quickly, hedging like this should be quite feasible. For example at BTCUSD=15000, 5BTC=75000USD. That means while waiting to accumulate an additional 5BTC=75000USD of revenue so that they can hedge with another BTC futures contract, they are exposed to exchange rate risk. How long does it take Steam to accumulate 75000USD of sales? Their 2016 revenue is said to be 3.5bn (https://www.statista.com/statistics/547025/steam-game-sales-...). That amounts to about 5 hours per 5BTC. BTCUSD could change a lot in 5 hours, but if you're a payment processor with 10x larger scale than Steam or think that the up and down fluctuation should roughly even out over the long run, maybe it's still not too risky to accept BTC.

Post reply on HN