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
Bitcoin can also be made physical, and last time I was at a Chuck E. Cheeses (granted, years ago) you could not use the tokens for pizza. Also, there is talk of making their currency digital with swipe cards.
Chart is completely invalid.No, I think the mistake you're making is regularizing it to BTC (which I consider a dying beast) and not to end purchasing power. The end purchasing power is what matters to the end user. Metrics be damned. I want more, not less because you think bitcoin is magic. I'd take a 2017 litecoin over an "all time high" 2013 litecoin for sure.
Oh, and look at the value today relative to BTC. Nailed it.It's not a bubble or a cash cow. No one gets rich just buying dollars. You know, inflation?
you can use fairly low fees if you dont care about the wait, sometimes days. segwit addresses on the originating side helps a bit too, as it uses lower fees. and yes i have used largish fees sometimes when i need to move coin in a hurry but compared to the value of the coins ive had to move, the fee is a couple percent. thats livable.
i have used ltc several times on lower value transaction and yeah ltc is nice that way but thats only to private individuals, not many payment processors use it, if any. hopefully that will change.