Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#81

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #56

janoc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The volatility alone wouldn't be a huge problem if the transactions were quick, apart from having to constantly re-price the goods (not a big deal with an automated system selling digital downloads, even though it is a real PITA for the accounting afterwards!). However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the trans…

Right, that is really the other side of what I didn't say. I don't expect Steam to be holding onto bitcoin for very long but if even for the short amount of time they're holding it the price is fluctuating and doesn't offer an equivalent price in USD from the time the user presses pay to the time the transaction is processed, on top of what can amount to a 20% fee it's simply not currency. They'd be better off allowi…

I wish someone invented a currency that was a percentage of the stock market index. Maybe blockchain could help with this...

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#82

Post by eterm » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:39 PM 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.

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. Bitcoin has the opposite problem now.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#83

Post by nicky0 » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

Epenthesis wrote: post #5

eqmvii wrote: post #2

Makes business and technological sense. Even the true believers have largely switched to advocating the store-of-value/digital gold model of bitcoin. We're absolutely in a bitcoin/cryptocurrency mania. Unfortunately, stating that is much easier than predicting what will happen next.

I've been hearing this a lot, but what does it actually mean ? Isn't the most important thing you want from a store of value stability? Ie, that it'll store the value that you put into it? Bitcoin certainly doesn't have that property. And if that's not the desired property implied by "store of value", what is?

Store at least the value you put in. Falling in value would be bad. But rising in value is a bonus.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#84

Post by nlperguiy » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

celticninja wrote: post #78

nlperguiy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for arbitrage you want to move all currencies, not just one. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets for example, bitcoin is now huge on bithumb, I'd buy it at bitstamp and sell it for 10% more, and repeat. given the slow transaction times, huge fees, large mempool, this is impossible to do. exchanges also ban you for trying to do arbitrage too, so there's a risk of losing all the funds.

Exchanges don't ban users for exploiting arbitrage, every trade is money to the exchange and it benefits them to enable arbitrage to take place. No idea where you pulled that claim from. It's also not impossible to trade via bitstamp and bitthumb, sure it may take an hour or so to get your btc from bitstamp to bitthumb but that's not the bottleneck. Once you sell on bitthumb for USD you need to get that USD back to b…

Some exchanges offer fee-less withdrawals (like Bitstamp), which makes arbitrage more profitable. I'm pretty sure they'd ban you ASAP if you're withdrawing like crazy (they are paying your fees in BTC).

As for transfer times for BTC not being a problem, 1 hour is a gamble in cryptocurrency world.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#85

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #76

Klathmon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but at the same time Visa requires you to hand over your payment information to each and every merchant you transact with, and they are able to pull as much money from your card as they want, and they are able to charge you multiple times at any point in the future. But there are some really cool solutions being worked on right now for this problem in bitcoin that can make it scale to a similar way to Visa. But…

cardholders are not liable for unauthorised transactions by merchants any merchant that commits that sort of fraud repeatedly will have their account terminated

Thankfully we have nice companies like equifax which help secure our details /s.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#86

Post by michaelscott » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

Epenthesis wrote: post #5

eqmvii wrote: post #2

Makes business and technological sense. Even the true believers have largely switched to advocating the store-of-value/digital gold model of bitcoin. We're absolutely in a bitcoin/cryptocurrency mania. Unfortunately, stating that is much easier than predicting what will happen next.

I've been hearing this a lot, but what does it actually mean ? Isn't the most important thing you want from a store of value stability? Ie, that it'll store the value that you put into it? Bitcoin certainly doesn't have that property. And if that's not the desired property implied by "store of value", what is?

Stores of value are normally viewed from a long term perspective. For most investors these are viewed as a hedge, even if the underlying store can be used for other purposes (think industrial and ornamental uses for silver, or the enjoyment of a renowned art piece), and so the short term fluctuation is not really an issue.

That said, if the trend of wild volatility were to continue into the long term it would indeed prove to be a poor store of value, but market speculation would indicate as such long before we were to get there (assuming we pick now as the period delta starting point for a "long term").

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#87

Post by jordigh » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

spmurrayzzz wrote: post #68

janoc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The volatility alone wouldn't be a huge problem if the transactions were quick, apart from having to constantly re-price the goods (not a big deal with an automated system selling digital downloads, even though it is a real PITA for the accounting afterwards!). However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the trans…

>However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the transaction fees have gone up in the meantime. That is creating unsustainable problems for the customer support and makes BTC unusable for actual payments. This is precisely what Lightning aims to solve, and at least anecdotally so far, has done so in the case of LT…

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 sticking it to the man or anything like that. I just want to have a convenient way to get tipped on IRC by anyone at any time and to be able to repay in kind, to anyone at any time.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#88

Post by adambyrtek » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #81

vxNsr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that is really the other side of what I didn't say. I don't expect Steam to be holding onto bitcoin for very long but if even for the short amount of time they're holding it the price is fluctuating and doesn't offer an equivalent price in USD from the time the user presses pay to the time the transaction is processed, on top of what can amount to a 20% fee it's simply not currency. They'd be better off allowi…

I wish someone invented a currency that was a percentage of the stock market index. Maybe blockchain could help with this...

That's more or less what ETFs do.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#89

Post by prepend » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #59

Kelbit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, Visa is about 1.5-2% plus $0.10 flat interchange. To break even with BTC against Visa, we're talking an average transaction of over $200. That's not feasible for the vast majority of merchants. Not to mention that the currency's extreme volatility means that when you sell it to convert it to greenbacks (the currency your investors actually care about) it probably won't be the same amount you were paid for.

Yes, but at the same time Visa requires you to hand over your payment information to each and every merchant you transact with, and they are able to pull as much money from your card as they want, and they are able to charge you multiple times at any point in the future. But there are some really cool solutions being worked on right now for this problem in bitcoin that can make it scale to a similar way to Visa. But…

It’s possible that merchants could charge you whatever they like for however much they want. But it’s unlikely. And if they did, you would get all your money back and the merchant would pay a fine.

The privacy info is valid, but BTC isn’t private either and people are connecting identities to purchases all the time. Not to mention 99% of the time I must give my info to the merchant so they can mail me whatever I purchased.

Re: Steam is no longer supporting Bitcoin

#90

Post by m3kw9 » Wed, Dec 06, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

janoc wrote: post #30

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.

The volatility alone wouldn't be a huge problem if the transactions were quick, apart from having to constantly re-price the goods (not a big deal with an automated system selling digital downloads, even though it is a real PITA for the accounting afterwards!). However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the trans…

If you treat it like gold(store of value) then having a service that makes it liquid is just a bonus. Is like expecting to be able to purchase something using stock.