Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

Post by patrickk » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 12:03 PM UTC

emj wrote: post #355

eterm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank charges nothing for instant transfers of up to £10,000. That's both cheaper than and faster than bitcoin. (And this isn't a cost hidden in a perk of a monthly fee, there's no monthly account fee either.) I'm pretty sure if Satoshi re-appeared "he" would be lamenting those artificially keeping the blocksize small. The 2MB limit was put in as a temporary solution to a problem of too many worthless transactions.…

Does that stand for transfers over (nation) state borders as well?

Post by myth_buster » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 12:07 PM UTC

  but the degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, 
  losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days

Post by speedplane » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 12:09 PM UTC

fb03 wrote: post #358

speedplane wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I agree, but one has to consider that in this example, since Bitcoin acceptance in businesses isn't that widespread, the receiving side would still need a gateway to convert that money back into fiat currency, and would also incur some sort of fee. So essentially in these use cases you are just offsetting the chain of custody a few steps later.

Post by criddell » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 12:46 PM UTC

thom wrote: post #360

nugget wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do many Bitcoin boosters even care about BTC becoming a currency any more? Seems it has achieved much more success as a frenzied medium of global speculation than it ever dreamed of as a stable digital currency.

I think you could fairly easily rationalise to yourself that Bitcoin _will_ one day be money, and we haven't reached its true value yet, so nobody wants to miss their piece of the pie when that happens.

Post by ForHackernews » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #352

ForHackernews wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Couldn't you say the same about penny stocks? And won't this problem go away as BTC gets more popular?