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Topic: As of today, Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method! - page 3. (Read 1055 times)

legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1003
From the blog post:

Quote
Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, 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.

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary, and Bitpay requires transactions to be sent and confirmed within 15 minutes - so the chances of BTC dropping 20% in 15 minutes are actually extremely small, and all the volatility is handled by Bitpay. The real problem here is that customers have to use high fees to get their tx included in the next block, otherwise Bitpay will have to send their transaction back.



Yeah, to realistically have a transaction confirm in a hour, I had to pay equivalent of $5 in fees. Who the hell going to pay that to buy a $60 game? They can just use their credit card for free and get 2% cashback.
legendary
Activity: 3024
Merit: 2148
From the blog post:

Quote
Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, 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.

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary, and Bitpay requires transactions to be sent and confirmed within 15 minutes - so the chances of BTC dropping 20% in 15 minutes are actually extremely small, and all the volatility is handled by Bitpay. The real problem here is that customers have to use high fees to get their tx included in the next block, otherwise Bitpay will have to send their transaction back.

full member
Activity: 233
Merit: 106
The Operating System for DAOs
The game has changed and bitcoin can no longer be used for everyday transactions ones even totally $50 because of the high fees. I won't move mine around anymore unless I have to or the fee is justified by the amount I am moving around. It does suck that this has happened maybe it can be used as a wake up call to the devs to get the fees lower. I know that may not be number one priority but it should be up high on the list if you ask me.
full member
Activity: 476
Merit: 100
I'm not really surprised. As it is now, Bitcoin is not a good option for payment services.. the tx fees are ridiculous and confirmations take too long. Even banks do "instant" transactions nowadays, so a solution needs to be found for this.

They are starting to compare Bitcoin to gold, which at the moment is a more accurate analogy investment-wise, if you ask me.
hero member
Activity: 2562
Merit: 577
It is fine, people were usually paying more than five or six bucks just for transaction fees, and that was not fair.. If you wanted to buy something worth $6 in steam, you must pay the fees.

I have a friend who bought a game that was at a discount, and he paid $2 for the game + $6 for the fees, and that is INSANE.

I dont know what is happening with the fees, i sent out 0.25 out of my hardware wallet a few hours ago, and i had to pay $18 worth of fees for that transaction.. It is pretty high, i hope that it will be fixed soon.
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1027
Dump it!!!
Gaming communities have always had a huge following and with this news its a blow to bitcoin and other digital currencies and if am not mistaken steam was also one of the first and few gaming places you could pay with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, and if they pull out now when cryptos are going mainstream it does not send a good message.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 559
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
bitcoins were never meant to be used as a fiat or to replace it
Read the title of the whitepaper:  "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".

One of satoshi's primary aims for Bitcoin was to prevent the high fees caused by trusted third parties, and the fraud that ensues.  With high transaction times and/or high fees, it no longer serves this purpose.  To claim that it was "never" intended for this purpose, though, is ridiculous.
What will they accept instead?  Huh
I imagine that they'll just continue to accept fiat and give up on crypto altogether for now.
hero member
Activity: 1890
Merit: 831
Well if you look at it from a positive point of view its not such a bad news Smiley

The fact that steam decided to call off payment through bitcoins means that people are now into holding bitcoins! Yes they have been through a lots of ups and downs through the time but now they are exceptionally shining being in a phase where there are 6 hard forks ahead of ypu and big whales and CME investing there is nothing that cqn go wrong now thus steam is accepting that people are treating it as an investment also bitcoins were never meant to be used as a fiat or to replace it, I think its perfect as an investment strategy..its a little risky but yes you can expect huge returns.

Thus lets accept this news and hold onto our bitcoins Smiley
hero member
Activity: 2086
Merit: 994
Cats on Mars
Should've posted the source: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613

From the business point of view of Steam, it's understable how Bitcoin isn't viable to be accepted as payment method yet, there's too much room for complaints from customers, though I think they are exaggerating with the 20$ transaction fee.
I'm ok with them putting on hold the use of cryptocurrency (BTC in this case) for the time being. Hopefully the Lightning Network is going to sort this out and Steam will accept btc again.
hero member
Activity: 1040
Merit: 538
Defend Bitcoin and its PoW: bitcoincleanup.com
Just checked, It is true.. I could not believe it, I hope the price stops moving so much so Steam could accept it again.. There are still third party sites that accept Bitcoin and I hope they stay with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is my only way to buy games, I hope I can continue buying them..
sr. member
Activity: 658
Merit: 256
It is so sad to hear of this news. The transaction fee is really too high to make sense to pay in BTC for smaller transactions.

Well understood of steam intention.
hero member
Activity: 1792
Merit: 534
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
Steam was one of the very few major merchants left still accepting BTC.

BTC's usage among merchants seems to have been going gradually backwards since the start of the year, with Fiverr dropping it in February and some of the groups that people claim accept Bitcoin not actually doing so or doing so indirectly.

Just goes to show that speculators and an increasing price don't make BTC better. 

member
Activity: 350
Merit: 13
Totally understandable, given how volatile BTC is and has been the past weeks.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 252
This is really a sad news. Steam had done a great job by accepting Bitcoin as a payment. But times have changed now. Bitcoin hasn't been a reliable payment option lately. Longer confirmations timings, Higher transaction fee isn't what Bitcoin was actually meant to be.

Last year everyone wanted to buy things with Bitcoin as it was almost free to send it and magical. But now its a store of value used to make you rich instantly:(
member
Activity: 166
Merit: 43
What will they accept instead?  Huh
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