Thursday, December 7th 2017
Steam Removes Bitcoin Support as Payment Option
In a blog post over at the Steam community pages, the outfit has announced that it would no longer be accepting Bitcoin as a viable payment option for purchases in the Steam store. In the blog, Steam points towards Bitcoin's high volatility as one of the reasons (the cryptocurrency very frequently sees swings in the order of hundreds of dollars in mere minutes, which makes it more difficult to properly equate Bitcoin's and the purchase's value. Additionally, Steam cites increasingly high transaction fees that sometimes can reach as much as $20, a well-known problem in the cryptocurrency's blockchain that has resisted numerous attempts at being fixed, thus generating multiple forks.
"At this point, it has become untenable to support Bitcoin as a payment option. We may re-evaluate whether Bitcoin makes sense for us and for the Steam community at a later date," the Steam team writes. Users that have been hit with requests for refunds or extra payment depending on the cryptocurrency's fluctuations can rest easy that Steam is aware of the issues and delays, and said that they "(...) will continue working to resolve any pending issues for customers who are impacted by existing underpayments or transaction fees." This event can be read in two ways: that it's a blow for Bitcoin's positioning as virtual gold, as this might start a snowball effect on other companies that accept Bitcoin as a means of payment, thus diluting the usability of the cryptocurrency and potentially affecting its value; or as a vindication for the defenders of Bitcoin as only a high-value, high-stakes cryptocurrency, leaving smaller payments to other more nimble, purpose-designed cryptocoins.
Source:
Steam Community Blog
"At this point, it has become untenable to support Bitcoin as a payment option. We may re-evaluate whether Bitcoin makes sense for us and for the Steam community at a later date," the Steam team writes. Users that have been hit with requests for refunds or extra payment depending on the cryptocurrency's fluctuations can rest easy that Steam is aware of the issues and delays, and said that they "(...) will continue working to resolve any pending issues for customers who are impacted by existing underpayments or transaction fees." This event can be read in two ways: that it's a blow for Bitcoin's positioning as virtual gold, as this might start a snowball effect on other companies that accept Bitcoin as a means of payment, thus diluting the usability of the cryptocurrency and potentially affecting its value; or as a vindication for the defenders of Bitcoin as only a high-value, high-stakes cryptocurrency, leaving smaller payments to other more nimble, purpose-designed cryptocoins.
30 Comments on Steam Removes Bitcoin Support as Payment Option
What was that about defeating swipe fees? Oh yeah, I can't hear you over my transaction fees... :laugh:
It just goes to show Bitcoin really is a dying beast, regardless of value. Some other coin will one day overtake it.
I'm watching Litecoin. More transaction volume, less fees, more usability.
That's why any service that lets you pay with BTC usually gives you up to an hour to make the transaction, because most people aren't going to add a nonsense fee just to get instant clearance.
It also has quadrouple the transactonal capacity of bitcoin, so the same issues would take much longer to manifest.
Also, if you want your transaction paid say within 24 frickin hours (absolutely neccesary with bitcoins volatility), those high fees are still a must and thus a very bad point in bitcoins formula.
But it's not just the fee you pay. It's the general cost of that transfer, i.e. what Steam has to pay.
When you use a credit card in a store, you don't pay anything for it. But the shop does (around 2% in US, 0.2% in EU) and they've included it in prices of their products. That means people that pay with cash are (on average) also paying for card transactions of other clients.
This becomes an issue in online game stores because accepting BTC raises your price and you're selling the exact same product other store does. So you're loosing a portion of the market.Which makes it even worse.
But it's not a common problem in the rest of the world and bitcoin needs more than 320 mln of Americans to get traction.
Banks in EU are very cheap (you might even find a "free" one).
And the interbank transfers are fast and rather safe.
And there are many online payments systems that are so easy to use and fast that they make bitcoin look silly.
So from a very traditional (still cash-loving) American point of view BTC might look futuristic and fantastic. From European point of view it's a bit... meh.
But honestly, this is a self sustain bubble by now, i.e. the value is not directly connected to how you can use cryptos today. It's more about how we expect to use them tomorrow. So in a way: people are accumulating BTC for the future. Hence, it doesn't really matter if you can't pay with BTC on Steam. There's still someone willing to buy them from you.
The only way to fix this is by state regulation, which should have become a standard in 2018. Sadly, it seems that this won't happen for the next few years...
(*) At this point BTC value is so erratic, it's very difficult to analyze the impact of external events.
So while we mostly hear about rich countries considering removing cash (e.g. Finland is almost there), it's the poorer ones that should really care.
From what I've heard, India already has a plan for going cashless. And it's not that surprising considering how much cash you have to make for such a huge country.
It's the Americans. They are very traditional. They love cash. And American financial institutions don't force cashless operations, because... well... because cash raises their margins. :-)
And it's not just cash. Americans also love cards with magnetic stripes. I've seen results of some large pool (AFAIR done by a major bank) and they've clearly stated that Americans love the swiping and the hand-written signature. So when chip+PIN cards gained popularity few years ago, there was a flood of articles on what they are and how to use them. For me, having used such card for a decade, this was bizarre.
When you think about it: technologies that attract a lot of attention in US (like PayPal, Samsung/Apple pay, now cryptocurrencies) have little to no importance in other parts of the world.
It's sort of similar to when the news says "The pound is down against the dollar but up against the euro", what they actually mean without the positive spin is that the pound and the euro have both fallen but the euro has fallen more. Basically if the USD value of bitcoin is going up then the USD value of altcoins rises too, sometimes (and quite often) even if their value is falling at the same time like is the case with LTC. Even though it's lost 3/4 of it's value since 2013 it looks at first glance like it's shot up, when in reality anyone who's been holding all this time has actually lost a lot of money.
A really simple way to look at it is, if you had 1 BTC in 2013 and did nothing with it you would have $11,912 worth of crypto today. But if instead you had exchanged it for LTC you would have $2,685 worth of crypto today, because the value of LTC has fallen to less than a quarter of its all time high.
LTC was a great coin back in 2013/2014 because it was the first major altcoin after BTC became unmineable on GPUs and it managed to position itself as the silver to BTC's gold, but it's day has long passed. The likes of Ethereum, Dash, Zcash, etc have long since surpassed it.