Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#341

Post by ForHackernews » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

LsDmT wrote: post #306

malloryerik wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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), w…

What you mean? You can short any crypto currency on many exchanges. Bitfinex and GDAX being the biggest right now.

And when bitcoin crashes, and the exchange "gets hacked", goes bankrupt, and the owners run away to some international destination, who do you claim your USD back from?

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#342

Post by speedplane » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 10:59 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #340

totalZero wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/bitcoin-futures.html http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures Apparently they will list on 18 Dec on CME, and 10 Dec on CBOE. I get the feeling that there will be a fair bit of selling pressure as a result. That's usually the case on lockup expiries and it would make sense for the initiation of a volatile instrument that wasn't previously shortable on a listed basis. I…

> I wonder how hedging transactions will affect the mechanics of the bitcoin market. The bitcoin market is astonishingly shallow compared to most commodities and nearly unregulated, I assume hedge funds and other smart money can and will manipulate the price up and down to their own advantage.

Why would it be particularly easier to manipulate bitcoin pricing over other stocks/securities? Simply because the authorities don't understand it yet, or something to do with the nature of crypto-currency itself?

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#343

Post by folli » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:02 AM UTC

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.

So if Bitcoin is unusable as currency (i.e. for exchange), what's its use-case then? Hoarding?

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#344

Post by juicyfroot » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:04 AM UTC

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #268

totalZero wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one take a short position in Bitcoin?

I think that's derriz's point. It's very difficult, and would be prohibitive for a small business to immediately convert bitcoin to cash.

Bitcoin Cash

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#345

Post by divbyzer0 » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:05 AM UTC

gulperxcx wrote: post #205

divbyzer0 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original idea was that one would exchange local currency for BTC only when needed, then transfer. The person receiving the BTC would then immediately exchange into their local currency. The result would be that either party would hold BTC for such a short period of time, BTC fluctuations would be negligible. It should be a medium of exchange, but for now its a speculative gamble.

What's the benefit of this over doing a direct exchange. ie. Local currency foreign currency?

The exchange would require a large amount of various currencies in stock.

With bitcoin in the example I gave earlier, the only currency required by both local exchanges would be Bitcoin, simplifying.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#346

Post by divbyzer0 » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:08 AM UTC

bluetwo wrote: post #250

gulperxcx wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit of this over doing a direct exchange. ie. Local currency foreign currency?

Only think I can think of is that it is hard to trace, which is important if you are trying to get cash out of China or Russia (or probably other places). Technically this use is still likely to be illegal.

That is not the use case I had in mind, think of amazon, ebay, etsy for international customers looking for a friction-less exchange.

And bear in mind, my original point is that bitcoin is moving away from the original intent.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#347

Post by speedplane » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:08 AM UTC

folli wrote: post #343

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.

So if Bitcoin is unusable as currency (i.e. for exchange), what's its use-case then? Hoarding?

Putting aside all the nefarious ways bitcoin can be exchanged, I still see it as a great way to transfer huge sums of money without a typical chain of custody.

For example, suppose you need to transfer $10M from the US to China, you'll need a prominent and trustworthy bank on each side of the transaction that will ensure it gets from point A to B. Transfers of this nature often take several days, and each bank will take a nice cut for that peace of mind.

Bitcoin can potentially allow that same money to be transferred in minutes without huge banks on either side.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#348

Post by speedplane » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:10 AM UTC

niij wrote: post #40

Klathmon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "$20 transaction fee" was an absolute top, and when that happened it was the single most congested the bitcoin network has ever been. It's nowhere near that right now. The total cost for your "median" transaction right now (at 226 bytes) is about $4.30 USD (at 150 sat/byte). Even if you double that to 300 sat/byte you are still at ~$9. Edit: I'm not saying even $4 fees are okay, just pointing out that it's not $2…

When did $4.30 transaction fees become even close to acceptable. I thought high TX fees was one of the things Bitcoin was purported to solve.

It will certainly be interesting if bitcoin fails because it is less efficient than humans.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#349

Post by ForHackernews » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:12 AM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #342

ForHackernews wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how hedging transactions will affect the mechanics of the bitcoin market. The bitcoin market is astonishingly shallow compared to most commodities and nearly unregulated, I assume hedge funds and other smart money can and will manipulate the price up and down to their own advantage.

Why would it be particularly easier to manipulate bitcoin pricing over other stocks/securities? Simply because the authorities don't understand it yet, or something to do with the nature of crypto-currency itself?

Because there are relatively few buyers and sellers in the market and the amounts of transactions are small, so one big mover can shift the price a lot.

According to some blockchain site[0] the average transaction volume for BTC is something like $2.25m USD equivalent

For comparison, on an average day, SPY[1], which is just one security (albeit a popular one) trades something around $17,160m (e.g. $17.16b).

[0] https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPY

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#350

Post by Klathmon » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 11:23 AM UTC

rawoke083600 wrote: post #319

DSMan195276 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's easiest to think of Bitcoin TX fees as a bribe to the miners to include your transaction in a block sooner then other transactions that have a lower fee attached. You get to choose the fee that you provide to the miner. The problem is that there are now so many transactions that are attempting to get through (And there is a maximum number of transactions that can be placed in a single block) that miners…

Stupid question.... What sort of compression is used on the block ? I.e If you use a better compression or re-align the transaction in the block can you not get more transactions per block ?

There is no compression at that level.

There is some compression at a storage level after blocks have been created, but it's not all that important. Pretty much all the data in Bitcoin is very difficult to compress with most of it being signatures, transactions, and addresses all stored in a binary format. The random nature of encryption makes it difficult to compress, and the formats have already been "hand tuned" for minimum size in many cases.