Topic: Blizzard Entertainment & Bitcoins - page 3. (Read 11675 times)

The problem is a company like Blizzard is not going to be an early adopter.  It's easier to explain transaction fees to a shareholder than speculating in a new currency.  

That's not exactly what I was going for  , but now you've made me hungry.

In a year, 2 bitcoins will get you 10,000 large pizzas?

A couple issues. First daily volatility would only be an issue if blizzard were to try to sell their btc at the very moment they received them, every time they received them,   and second the only reason the market is so volatile is because it is loaded with speculators. When more companies embrace BTC volatility will lessen thus speculators will not be able to profit as readily on short term margin trading. Most every market has some amount of volatility but that has never stopped anyone from embracing it eventually.

The coolest thing about BTC is the potential for lucrative opportunities for anyone with a little bit of vision and the ability to think about not what is but what could be.

Last year, someone paid 10,000 bitcoins for 2 large pizzas. Today, 2 bitcoins can get you 2 large pizzas. I'm sure you can figure out how that works.

The volatility angle is much less of a solid argument than transaction fees.

Exactly.  People need to stop using the transaction fee angle because it's nonsensical.  The amount they pay in fees is a small fraction compared to the volatility exposure they would face with Bitcoins in its current state. 

Which has nothing much to do with how many steps you have to take to get that Dollar. Even though Bitcoin is pretty new, any teenager will know long before you ever heard of it if it's interesting to them in some way (because the other kids show up in school with it, they need it for some online thing or whatever). The same thing is true of many other new technologies that the current generation takes for granted. Their thumbs are apparently now the most developed because of SMS, while for older generations it was the index finger. How long does Facebook exist and how many people do you know who hasn't heard of it? You underestimate how fast something new can spread.


The average adult does not know a whole lot of things. Most won't ever care, as long as they aren't hungry or homeless. Or their children tell them.


Not gonna waste time on that since you have made up your mind anyway. You should just know that probably half your items are or will be superfluous soon. There are already sites taking out the steps for conversion and allowing you to pay directly in Bitcoin. If Blizzard ever supported Bitcoin I'm pretty sure some would specialize on making this a one-click process. I expect online wallets and Bitcoin clients with built in CC to BTC via exchange plugins or similar will be commonplace in the not too distant future.

Once you have Bitcoins, for every renewal you just grab your mobile and punch in the amount, select WoW from your bookmarks and you're done. Seconds later you are online. Android wallets already exist, FYI.


You're confusing the items on your own list, the above would be step 5. Step 9 takes seconds. As for step 5, last I heard people were using Dwolla because it's much faster than CC/banks. Maybe you should try another exchange? There are at least 2 professional alternatives now (Tradehill, Camp BX), more soon enough.

The steps involving Dwolla can be eliminated too BTW, you can wire to an exchange directly. AFAIK people use Dwolla because it's faster and/or they already have money in there, and possibly if wire transfers are more expensive from say Europe to a non-EU exchange.


I don't think so, if you read other threads the whole weekend dip has been debunked to begin with. Proof: exchange rate didn't dip this weekend, it increased slightly (14.40 to 15.00 right now).


But they can. I don't know where you are getting your information, exchanges are 24/7, transfering Bitcoins in or out is a matter of seconds. Deposit/withdrawal of Dollars takes longer, but that is the exact same thing as any other USD only merchant, CC etc., the delay is on the bank end, nothing to do with the Bitcoin economy. Except the fees are lower for BTC. Also, there are already plugins for ecommerce suites (magento for example, 2 others I forget the name of) and merchants who have dynamic pricing and immediate conversion on an exchange, e.g. bitcoinworldmarket.com


Sorry but that's just bullshit. Look up the merchant list on the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade) and see how many are charging the exact same or possibly less because of the lower fees.

BTW, I could guess the function of timecard from the context but wasn't familiar with the term (I would have called it prepaid card).

All i can say is wow. NO PUN INTENDED. Why would they accept bitcoins as you cannot convert them on the weekends and etc. Here is a bit of a newsflash for you: credit cards/debit cards arent instant either. The reason why they are accepted is they are trusted. Bitcoins could have the same outcome but instead of coming up with innovative ideas and working tirelessly to mainstream this thing I see a forum littered with naysayers and people who just say no to everything. I am glad i do not live in such a disappointing world as what exists inside your mind.

To say bitcoins are not able to be used because you cannot trade them on the weekend as readily as you would like (yet) and thus no large company like blizzard could ever embrace them is absolutely retarded. Most things are not traded on weekends. Anything in the stock market. Markets are closed altogether. Yet we can still buy bacon (pork bellies) we can still buy gas (crude oil per barrel) and the list goes on an on.

Perhaps you misunderstand what an option is. People could have the option to pay with bitcoins. It does not mean that they have to or if they choose to do so it may not be because that is the only way they could pay.


from a business owners standpoint accepting credit cards absolutely sucks. The only thing you gain from it is convenience for your customers. A business loses money by accepting cards. Merchant accounts are expensive. If i were to say get 1,000,000 in sales per day with credit cards the fees would be 30,000 on average. So by your logic it would not behoove me to try to recoup some of that 30k im losing in fees everyday?  Seriously?

perhaps they are talking about you towards the end of this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtnzEhHBIq8 ?

What do you think of the concept "Bitcoin"?

Schadenfreude.  This place is an echo chamber, and I know despite all the good advice you get to get out of it, you won't.

Serious question... Why did you even bother to create an account on this forum?

i'm trying to build a service that would make accepting bitcoins from customers (and getting paid in USD if they want to)

see out http://openbitcoin.biz

As an average adult in Western society, if someone tells me that something costs a dollar, I have the background knowledge about how I can attain a dollar, and the various means with which I can transmit that dollar to the other party.

The average adult does not know what a bitcoin is.  Once you explain to them about anonymous cryptocurrencies, if they're still interested they will need to know how to obtain one.  Please come up with a more concise list of steps that you would tell someone to ensure that they were able to turn their dollars into bitcoins into a WoW subscription.  This is what Blizzard would have to do: if they advertise a payment method, they sure as hell make sure you know how to utilize it.


Step number 9 is because there is a prevention on moving money into/out of Dwolla or Mtgox on weekends, isn't there?  Isn't that the justification for the price falling every weekend?  As a result, no serious merchant would agree to a price in bitcoins if they couldn't immediately convert those to dollars, which cannot be done on the weekend.


Yes, the products you can buy with bitcoins are "similar" to those you can buy with USD.  They just cost 400% more.

I don't have any idea how much credit card fees are, but I have a feeling it is no where near the volatility of Bitcoin. I'm used to waking up every morning and having the price gone up/down 10%. And that's on a quiet day. A company like Blizzard doesn't need to expose itself to that kind of risk.

What you can and should do is post on the WoW forums and tell people they can pay for their WoW subscription by letting guiminer run overnight. Do so in three sentences or less and don't use words like "inflation", "government", or "Ben Bernanke".

After they realize it's not a scam and trust you, you can explain the ideology and the world of Bitcoin. Who knows, maybe they'll find something on SR to give them an extra "boost" in late night raids 

People exchange WOW gold for Bitcoins
People pay Blizzard in Bitcoins to continue playing WOW
Blizzard doesn't have to pay CC transaction fees

The items I was thinking about was more so equipment for your character, not their in-game mounts/pets or whatever else they've got now. I agree that testing BTC via ponies would be a good idea.

Yeah, the same payment method that most companies use - credit card.

Don't you think it's a little early to write-off any possibilities for this approach? Blizzard's official position about people who buy gold or items is that they don't support it and would "ban" anyone who was discovered, but the fact is that they acknowledge that "secondary market" is one of the big reasons their game thrives so they continue to turn a blind eye.

Basically, they could test bitcoin's viability by selling virtual items - which costs them nothing...and if they sell their ponies and horsies for BTC it would certainly drive up demand for bitcoins, and in turn their value.

The thing is... with little to no effort... Blizzard can sell sparkly ponies for $25 a pop... and does daily... and they are not very keen on people buying and selling their own virtual currency.

Now they might sign you up as a retailer of game time cards (and WOW trading cards while your at it!)... then YOU could sell them for bitcoins

When they need money they just create another virtual pet or mount and cash the checks, bitcoin would be way to much work for them right now.

^This!

A lot of kids that doesn't have their credit card and whatelse are able to use their GPU to mine without problems and will then buy games and other things with bitcoins

Sure they won't make thousands of $ per month via mining, but even 15$ is enough to pay a MMO, so they can and will

The should accept ingame Money that would be cool that way I would fireup my Farmbots again!