Steam No Longer Accepting Bitcoin Payments

DooKey

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Valve announced today that they are no longer going to accept bitcoin as payment for games on Steam. They say that the cryptocurrency is too volatile over the last few months and it's just not worth the trouble to them or their customers to continue using bitcoin as payment. Furthermore, until bitcoin can speed up transactions, and the market settles down, it wouldn't surprise me to see others take this same stance.

In the past few months we've seen an increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network. For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee.
 
Which is why the lightning network is coming. Currently transactions are too slow, and LN will speed this up.
 
Valve announced today that they are no longer going to accept bitcoin as payment for games on Steam. They say that the cryptocurrency is too volatile over the last few months and it's just not worth the trouble to them or their customers to continue using bitcoin as payment. Furthermore, until bitcoin can speed up transactions, and the market settles down, it wouldn't surprise me to see others take this same stance.

In the past few months we've seen an increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network. For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee.

Maybe when the CME opens up contracts it will settle the coinage down a bit. After a tumultuous opening, I'm sure.
 
I have a bad feeling about this for Bitcoin. My gut is telling me this thing is about to be worthless as you probably won't be able to use it anything or the fees and headache involved is going to outweigh the profit.
 
Strange move by Steam. I wonder how much the bitcoins they have received have appreciated since they received them? If someone bought a $60 game a couple months ago Steam would have $120 worth of bitcoins for it today.
 
I have a bad feeling about this for Bitcoin. My gut is telling me this thing is about to be worthless as you probably won't be able to use it anything or the fees and headache involved is going to outweigh the profit.

Yar, my spidey-sense is starting to tingle too. If this ends up being a massive pyramid scheme - it will literally be raining men.
 
They figure it's pretty much topped out and they're cashing out. No big mystery.
 
Strange move by Steam. I wonder how much the bitcoins they have received have appreciated since they received them? If someone bought a $60 game a couple months ago Steam would have $120 worth of bitcoins for it today.

My guess is they do what most businesses do and setup an automatic deposit and exchange system.
 
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies have two huge issues

1) governments can make it illegal for all consumer transactions

2) transaction rate is too low for mass adoption

How big does it have to be for it to be "mass adoption?" Like, is Diners' Club suffering from the same thing? It works some places, but not others. More not. Way, way, WAY more than Bitcoin of course. I think some of this stuff is maturing pretty fast.
 
I know a guy that got out at 9K and he is more than happy. And that was with 192 bitcoins.

He started mining at the end of 2012 / start of 2013 with a pretty massive setup that I think he initially dumped around 12k into over 6 months. He is retired from Goodyear Tire. in Topeka Kansas.

His wife left him because he tried talking to her sister or something like that. Now that he is somewhat wealthy his wife wants to move back in with him. He told me he showed up to her Sisters where his ex-wife is staying in his brand new 2017 Corvette Stingray and told her no thanks. lol. I know the car part is true, I met him for lunch then I went over with him when he picked it up from Hendricks Chevrolet this summer / early Sept. Not sure when it went to 9K, and he already had money. I think it was around 67K dollars he paid for the Corvette. He didn't buy my lunch which kinda annoyed me lol.
 
Man, I wish I had a shit-ton of Bitcoin I could have used to buy........................nothing with.

Converting BTC into cash is pretty simple. I just bought a couple of expensive electric guitars and one expensive vintage guitar amplifier, as well as a bunch of pedals and accessories with a fraction of a bitcoin I didn't know I still had until a week ago. And the remaining fraction of that bitcoin is still worth over $8,000 USD right now.

I was mining BTC when it was worth less than $2, and was mining around 4 BTC a day. I eventually had to stop mining due to various reasons, unfortunately. But the fraction of BTC that I just relocated was basically like dust particles when I stopped paying attention. I hope that BTC reached $100k, and then $1 million.
 
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I know a guy that got out at 9K and he is more than happy. And that was with 192 bitcoins.

He started mining at the end of 2012 / start of 2013 with a pretty massive setup that I think he initially dumped around 12k into over 6 months. He is retired from Goodyear Tire. in Topeka Kansas.

His wife left him because he tried talking to her sister or something like that. Now that he is somewhat wealthy his wife wants to move back in with him. He told me he showed up to her Sisters where his ex-wife is staying in his brand new 2017 Corvette Stingray and told her no thanks. lol. I know the car part is true, I met him for lunch then I went over with him when he picked it up from Hendricks Chevrolet this summer / early Sept. Not sure when it went to 9K, and he already had money. I think it was around 67K dollars he paid for the Corvette. He didn't buy my lunch which kinda annoyed me lol.

So the moral here is you have to have a lot of money to make money. :sneaky:
 
Converting BTC into cash is pretty simple. I just bought a couple of expensive electric guitars and one expensive vintage guitar amplifier, as well as a bunch of pedals and accessories with a fraction of a bitcoin I didn't know I still had until a week ago. And the remaining fraction of that bitcoin is still worth over $8,000 USD right now.

I was mining BTC when it was worth less than $2, and was mining around 4 BTC a day. I eventually had to stop mining due to various reasons, unfortunately. But the fraction of BTC that I just relocated was basically like dust particles when I stopped paying attention. I hope that BTC reached $100k, and then $1 million.

Congratulations.
 
Bitcoin has serious problems with scaling that everyone is just ignoring. There will have to be a hard fork at some point to correct them. But nobody wants to hear that they just want their bitcoin investment to keep going up.

It also has a real centralization problem. Supposedly cryptocurrencies were going to exist decentralized it was one of their selling points. Bitcoin is not decentralized.
 
Congratulations.

Thanks. Though, with all the BTC that I used to have and spent or cashed out when it was worth less than $100, and then less than $1,000, I feel like I missed out on most of it.

I was telling friends and family to buy BTC when it was just a few dollars. None of them believed it was going to become anything, and some still don't seem to be able to mentally compute that it's worth real money. Too bad for them, and myself. Coz we could all been mega-millionaires.
 
Strange move by Steam. I wonder how much the bitcoins they have received have appreciated since they received them? If someone bought a $60 game a couple months ago Steam would have $120 worth of bitcoins for it today.
It's not that strange, it's the transaction fee making it too unpredictable for vendors to use. Take a look:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html

Right now the average transaction fee is about $6. Last month it hit almost $20. If you're expecting to buy a $15 game and have $20 in transaction fees, that's not cool. Seeing as how the value of bitcoin keeps going up, this situation is likely to only get worse. I think Bitcoin is failing as a currency, although it's been doing great as an investment medium so far.
 
Man i wish i still had all mine i had 180 at one time:( most of them where sold off at the sub $100 range
 
Man i wish i still had all mine i had 180 at one time:( most of them where sold off at the sub $100 range

I know how that feels. Oh well. Lots of people have 'I could have been / done / had...' stories.

And there's still lots of opportunities to make big money with crypto-currencies, including Bitcoin.
 
My guess is they do what most businesses do and setup an automatic deposit and exchange system.
They'd have to, since Steam doesn't keep most of the money from most sales. Doing otherwise would mean that they'd essentially be treating Bitcoin as an investment, paying out to developers separate from the actual transaction.
 
Strange move by Steam. I wonder how much the bitcoins they have received have appreciated since they received them? If someone bought a $60 game a couple months ago Steam would have $120 worth of bitcoins for it today.

It all depends on how they were working it. Some companies are going to accept bitcoin but then immediately sell it, this covers their base against the price volatility. And I would expect very many companies were doing just that. They probably charged a premium to accept BTC, then cashed it out immediately. Some companies though probably have been holding on to the BTC as a very long term bet hedge and now days some of them are probably saying that looks saturated, you know hundreds of percent growth in a short time, so lets stop accepting and sell out playing against the incoming correction.
 
Bitcoin has serious problems with scaling that everyone is just ignoring. There will have to be a hard fork at some point to correct them. But nobody wants to hear that they just want their bitcoin investment to keep going up.

Nah, doesn't need a hard fork. "Buying coffee" type transactions - or in this case buying $60 videogames - just need to be moved off chain. Lightning network.

Increasing blocksize also won't do shit. Miners will just spam the mempool whether 2MB or 8MB blocks just the same. So again, Lightning Network.
 
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Man, I wish I had a shit-ton of Bitcoin I could have used to buy........................nothing with.
Of course it is, the whole crypto stuff WILL implode.. I am saying this as a big supporter and a person who thinks this is one of the most important development for humanity in a while. However in typical human fashion we are over doing it, on our way to over correct it.. which is why most say history repeats itself.
 
Man, I wish I had a shit-ton of Bitcoin I could have used to buy........................nothing with.
Only on [H] could you have someone post a response to an article about the #1 software distribution networks history of bitcoin usage and say "you cant buy anything with bitcoin". Sometimes I cringe just coming here.
 
Strange move by Steam. I wonder how much the bitcoins they have received have appreciated since they received them? If someone bought a $60 game a couple months ago Steam would have $120 worth of bitcoins for it today.

How can you affix a price to something based on an unstable currency? Charging $30 for a game and accepting payment with the current value of BTC would be what, 1/433 of a single BTC? How can they work with that? Anyhow, they aren't taking BTC per se, but the dollar; BTC is a fiat currency within a fiat currency. If they were taking actual BTC they would stand as much a chance to lose as gain.

I am saying this as... a person who thinks this is one of the most important development for humanity in a while.

lol. Then humanity is truly fucked.
 
How big does it have to be for it to be "mass adoption?" Like, is Diners' Club suffering from the same thing? It works some places, but not others. More not. Way, way, WAY more than Bitcoin of course. I think some of this stuff is maturing pretty fast.

Like it or not, having a government 'back' your fiat currency is a whole lot more trustworthy to most folk than a nebulous digital currency that is based on difficult mathematical equations. Diner's club, as well as every other limited credit option (Amazon, Kohl's, etc.) are all tied to the currency of the user/receiver. BTC is tied to the same, but pretends it is its own currency. Credit company's may be the same thing in reality, but literally nobody thinks of them that way.
 
Well that's too bad!

Wait actually it's not bad. Why would anyone accept a currency preferred and mostly used by criminals?
 
Like it or not, having a government 'back' your fiat currency is a whole lot more trustworthy to most folk than a nebulous digital currency that is based on difficult mathematical equations. Diner's club, as well as every other limited credit option (Amazon, Kohl's, etc.) are all tied to the currency of the user/receiver. BTC is tied to the same, but pretends it is its own currency. Credit company's may be the same thing in reality, but literally nobody thinks of them that way.
I'm no fan of bitcoin, don't own bitcoin, i dont think bitcoin will be the crypto left standing. That being said, you kind of have this the other way around. When you spend dollars or yen or euros, the majority of the value of that currency is debt. So not only do you have the issue of supply being controlled by a CB, but debt collapses have direct impact on your ability to buy things BItcoin has a finite amount, making it a zero sum game. The Dollar, yen, euro doesn't, which from an actual trust standpoint makes bitcoin a more trustworthy instrument, if merchants actually accept it. The issue with bitcoin is one of acceptance.
 
I'm no fan of bitcoin, don't own bitcoin, i dont think bitcoin will be the crypto left standing. That being said, you kind of have this the other way around. When you spend dollars or yen or euros, the majority of the value of that currency is debt. So not only do you have the issue of supply being controlled by a CB, but debt collapses have direct impact on your ability to buy things BItcoin has a finite amount, making it a zero sum game. The Dollar, yen, euro doesn't, which from an actual trust standpoint makes bitcoin a more trustworthy instrument, if merchants actually accept it. The issue with bitcoin is one of acceptance.

Nope, the issue is not acceptance it's forward thinking about the longevity of it, the exponential ramping up of difficulty processing transactions, the non regulation of it, etc....I can go on but the acceptance is nothing compared to the rest. The way its built is more of a investment than a currency. There were major firms accepting bitcoin a while ago that no longer use it due to it's volatility due to anyone with enough horsepower can influence the so called market. We won't even get into the ability for suckers to be scammed and ripped off on a weekly basis.
 
Well that's too bad!

Wait actually it's not bad. Why would anyone accept a currency preferred and mostly used by criminals?
I'm not sure anyone is rolling up Bitcoin to do a line of coke...

I am very reluctant to condemn a product merely because of some misuse.
 
I'm no fan of bitcoin, don't own bitcoin, i dont think bitcoin will be the crypto left standing. That being said, you kind of have this the other way around. When you spend dollars or yen or euros, the majority of the value of that currency is debt. So not only do you have the issue of supply being controlled by a CB, but debt collapses have direct impact on your ability to buy things BItcoin has a finite amount, making it a zero sum game. The Dollar, yen, euro doesn't, which from an actual trust standpoint makes bitcoin a more trustworthy instrument, if merchants actually accept it. The issue with bitcoin is one of acceptance.
On the other hand, the governments backing those currencies can levy taxes and change monetary policy and stuff like that. There are many considerations, I'd say.
 
Only on [H] could you have someone post a response to an article about the #1 software distribution networks history of bitcoin usage and say "you cant buy anything with bitcoin". Sometimes I cringe just coming here.

The word Bitcoin in a thread title here is like a bat signal for dumb. Every time.
 
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I know a guy that got out at 9K and he is more than happy. And that was with 192 bitcoins.

He started mining at the end of 2012 / start of 2013 with a pretty massive setup that I think he initially dumped around 12k into over 6 months. He is retired from Goodyear Tire. in Topeka Kansas.

His wife left him because he tried talking to her sister or something like that. Now that he is somewhat wealthy his wife wants to move back in with him. He told me he showed up to her Sisters where his ex-wife is staying in his brand new 2017 Corvette Stingray and told her no thanks. lol. I know the car part is true, I met him for lunch then I went over with him when he picked it up from Hendricks Chevrolet this summer / early Sept. Not sure when it went to 9K, and he already had money. I think it was around 67K dollars he paid for the Corvette. He didn't buy my lunch which kinda annoyed me lol.

nobodycares.gif
 
The word Bitcoin in a thread title here is a guaranteed lightning rod for dumb. Every time.
I've noticed it is a polarized topic. Is this the result of gpu prices causing frustration?
 
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