Maybe because they don't want to be left with it when the bubble will pop?
Comment has been collapsed.
I have to admit that I never bothered to keep track of the evolution of cryptocurrencies, but looking at the charts it does look like it is reaching absurd levels. Can't blame Steam for opting for more stable payment methods.
If / when it crashes, it won't be pretty. Oh well, at least blockchain-based technology does show promise for individual and social data, though.
Comment has been collapsed.
This number (2,658$) is outdated, its currently around 13,000$.
Comment has been collapsed.
I was glad to get rid of the coins I had mined back in 2013, just before it tanked. (Bought some TF2 keys that I traded for a few Steam games.) If I had kept them, they'd be worth around $25k today.
Comment has been collapsed.
with no regulations, the market price is being manipulated by exchanges and whales 24/7 - a year ago the price was ~ 750$
genuinely don't know wether that is the greatest factor influencing the price or because its the main entry-crypto-currency to buy other cryptos or its that small ... that any influx of serious investors jacks the price up insanely (as crypto is still very small) - undoubtedly a mix of all
if i'd be holding any serious amounts of btc i'd be worried when the local gooberminte will pounce at it or if
temporarily on some exchange, them being "hacked" or just having decided to "loot" a few of their users lol
"sory we dun goofed kthxbye"
Comment has been collapsed.
They won't be as they use BitPay. Which is like paypal but for bitcoin. Still it doesn't make use of bitcoin certain so issues have likely been plenty with it.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm sorry, I've never used it, what exactly is BitPay? Some sort of an account where you store bitcoins?
Comment has been collapsed.
Payment provider. Customer gives them bitcoin and they give shop dollars. Due to instability and fees and possibility of slow transactions in bitcoin it's a mess.
Comment has been collapsed.
Makes sense. Buying stuff with Bitcoin (mainly when it was few or cheap games) was hella expensive. Sometimes the fees were more expensive than the actual games.
Comment has been collapsed.
Always bad news when less options are available to pay.
And yes, the fees were very expensive.
Comment has been collapsed.
To be honest, I would be one of the fellas who would benefit from a bitcoin crash. Just imagine all the cheap hardware that would become available.
Comment has been collapsed.
That sucks, man. I feel you. I'm currently in the brink of buying a GTX 1050 (or a 1050ti, depending on my budget). This one is not affected by miners, I think. They seem to prefer the RX 460.
Comment has been collapsed.
don't buy a gtx 1050 damnit. nor a 1060. buy from amd rx 500 series (like 570 or 580) instead. better power for the price and it's said that it will age better aswell and have better dx12 compatibility
Comment has been collapsed.
Nobody is mining Bitcoin with those graphics cards, though. The surge in GPU prices of the past few months is due to Ethereum (plus some other flavour of the week crypto coins). As I take it, many moons have passed since Bitcoin was no longer seen as profitable for your average miner. Ethereum still seems to be going strong last I heard, although it has slowed since the initial boom I think (?). I'm not sure if we can expect GPU prices to suddenly crash (or come down to earth, at least) even if Bitcoin does, that may take some time still.
Comment has been collapsed.
TIL Steam accepted bitcoins, a bit late I suppose.
Comment has been collapsed.
This is the best possible occasion to learn that they were accepting it xD
Comment has been collapsed.
As much as I hate to admit it, it is a sensible and reasonable change that is difficult to argue with. Bitcoin seems to be getting way too unpredictable. Maybe some of the more… controlled ones like Etherum could be a viable alternative for companies.
Comment has been collapsed.
I like the concept about bitcoin, but there's one flaw. In order to process a transaction there's a pretty much fixed network fee in bitcoin, which used to be a fraction of a cent when the BTC price was low (some wallet providers even used to pay it for you). Now with a BTC price around $13,000 that fee easily amounts to an equal of $3-$4 per transaction, so pretty much every other payment method is cheaper.
Comment has been collapsed.
The transaction fee is not related with the price of BTC, it's related with the increasing number of transactions. If you're interested in this problem you should read the comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7hzklb/as_of_today_steam_will_no_longer_support_bitcoin/
In summary, Bitcoin did not scale well (they didn't increase the blocksize according to the demand). That's why Bitcoin Cash fork was created.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think, I paid the same ~20k-30k sat fee for processing a transaction as before.
Only that it makes a huge difference whether you pay that fee at a bitcoin price $1,000/BTC, $400/BTC or $13,000/BTC.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, I understand your point but the main reason is the tiny blocksize and the number of transactions, nowadays you need to pay more for each transaction if you want it to be processed in less than 24 hours. If you don't care about it, you can pay a low fee as you did in the past.
Bitcoin (Core) is a failure as a currency to use for online payments, I totally understand why Valve has dropped it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, I think, I always paid about the same amount in satoshis, it's not like I pay more nowadays. it's just the same amount is worth more. Or was it really less? I don't think so, but it's hard to say, as I said, in the past wallet services like coinbase or xapo used to pay (part of?) the fee. It's just no fun, e.g. if it costs $4 to send money worth $10, I agree it's not very useful for online payments. It might still have some value for larger cross-border money transfers. Compared to Western Union the fees might still be okay. Other than that, it's only good for speculation. I sold most of my BTC when I figured I cannot reasonably use it for payments anymore. I should have waited, now I would have gotten like twice as much, but hey. Maybe I even get some Bitcoin Cash next year. I had my BTC stored at coinbase at the time of the fork, eventually they agreed that everyone shall get their BCH, once they implemented it, we'll see.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's a matter of time before investors notice the inability of their toy. But no one knows when it will be.
Comment has been collapsed.
I never even realized they accepted Bitcoin. Well, I don't give a shit about Steam anymore so no big deal either way.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's... surprising. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. :P
Comment has been collapsed.
They could choose to switch to a more stable altcoin. In my opinion that would be a nicer way to resolve this.
Ethereum comes to mind: it's nice compared to bitcoin for this purpose.
Or litecoin, low transaction fees in comparison.
But it is apparently easier for them to just not accept cryptocurrency and wait it out.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmm, strange. Steam's BTC payments drop coincides with the NiceHash's security breach that resulted in a theft of $60 mil in BTC. Have they been affected by it? I find it questionable for this to be just a weird coincidence.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'd imagine that that breach contributed to Bitcoin's recent volatility, which was the stated reason why they dropped it. So even though it was unlikely to be the direct cause, it could have contributed indirectly.
Comment has been collapsed.
steam used bitpay, so they never actually handled bitcoins.dunno if bitpay and nicehash are related tho.
Comment has been collapsed.
The number of different cryptocurrency's that now exist is pretty ridiculous. Just looking at the comments on the steam blog post linked, there were 5 alternative crypto-currencies suggested by people.
Comment has been collapsed.
I briefly looked into the crypto boom a few months ago and was flummoxed by the hundreds of different things people were deciding to encode into the blockchains to try to tie the currency to value somewhere. At this point I'm waiting for someone to invent Metacoin which uses the compute cycles to instantiate and manage new crypto currencies.
Realistically, though, I think it's just a symptom of massive inequality. Rich people can't spend all their money and don't want it just sitting around, so it has to be invested somewhere. If there's more money than investment opportunities, any new investments are going to attract loads of cash and speculation.
Comment has been collapsed.
Makes it harder for them to manage payment in regions.
Comment has been collapsed.
Bitcoin is a hoarding & speculation currency now :0
Hope they start accepting other cryptos like Monero and Litecoin
Comment has been collapsed.
A new change that is likely to impact some people.
As announced a while ago, Bitcoin is no longer supported.
The reason, its (recently accentuated) value volatility.
Comment has been collapsed.