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Steam Ends Support For Bitcoin (polygon.com)
Valve is ending support for Steam purchases made with bitcoin, the company said today, citing "high fees and volatility" in the value of the cryptocurrency. In a statement, it said: "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," Valve said in a post on Steam. "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. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically."
Luckily there is never a shortage of complete morons with money to fleece. Tulips anyone?
They're no longer accepting BTC so that they're not stuck holding the bag after the bubble pops-- which will be any day now it looks like.
Why does a transaction take so long and why does it cost $20? If someone is only transferring $5 American dollars worth of bitcoin would it still cost $20 in transaction fees?
The only people pushing tulip comparisons are bank shills like Chase CEO.
You're right, it's a dumb comparison.
Bitcoins are more like Beanie Babies.
=Smidge=
Currency should have a stable value compared to the rest of the goods in the marketplace. We typically see currencies fail due to rapid inflation. Where the currency loses value rapidly compared to the rest of the goods in the marketplace. This may be the first time we see a currency fail due to rapid deflation.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Until you sell your bitcoins and put that money into a more stable retirement vessel then you have not earned an early retirement. If you have then I would consider you lucky and wise.
I am no more jealous of you then I would be toward a gambler at a casino who won. Bitcoin, as an investment, is a gamble at best. If I'm wrong then you're set for life and that's great. But I still won't regret my decision because I still consider the investment too risky.
Is there actual commerce happening with Bitcoin?
That's the point of TFA. Valve no longer sees Bitcoin as a viable for commerce. In order for a currency to function, it's value has to be stable. Bitcoin is very unstable.
If a currency no longer facilitates commerce, is it still a currency?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Yeah, but have you actually tried using Bitcoin recently as it's intended purpose of a currency? It sucks! It takes 15 minutes for a transaction to confirm now, during which time the actual value of the currency could have gone up or down by 2 or 3%. And, like Steam is complaining about, the Bitcoin transaction fees that made sense back when the currency was $100 are completely asinine now that it's around $11,000.
Yeah, I might be a bit bitter that this "currency" completely defied logic and got this overvalued, but that doesn't mean that I'm not right. Bitcoin (as it currently works) IS stupid.
Those who get into - and out of - a Ponzi scheme early generally profit from it. At the expense of the fools who jump on the bandwagon later.
You made yours, so fuck everybody else, eh? I'm not sure you're any better than a "bank shill", yourself.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Of course I'm jealous, but that's neither here nor there. Bitcoin has fulfilled it's promise as an investment, it has failed it's promise as a currency.
You can't use it's success as an investment to argue that transaction costs of 20 fucking bucks and a throughput counted in one or two digits per second don't make it completely useless as a currency, Lightning network isn't a solution either because the limitations and lack of transparency will be very hard to explain or justify to normal users.
If it continues its run as an investment and criminal transaction method for a while longer, bully for you. That makes it no more useful for commercial trade such as Steam, it will have still failed as a currency.
Have no fear, according to a recent news report the run up in value from $100 to $11k was due to the winklevoss twins buying $65million worth of bitcoin probably constituting more than half the coins in circulation. When they sell those coins the value of bitcoin will crash the other direction if for no other reason than it would take the twins more than 6months at the full daily trading volume to unload that many coins. Put that many coins back in circulation and value of the coin will crash back down to $100. The only reason the value is so high is that "investors" have bought and sequestered so many coins at this point that the number circulating is greatly reduced.