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Steam now accepts Bitcoin for purchases (bitpay.com)
64 points by StavrosK 1 hour ago | past | web | 22 comments





So you buy bitcoins with dollars, Bitpay exchanges the bitcoins back into dollars, and then they hand the dollars over to Steam.

And this is meant to be a good thing?


I was really surprised that the announcement that Steam may support Bitcoin made waves a while ago, yet the announcement that it actually does did not.

I used it to buy a (horrible) game last night, and it worked beautifully. Contrast with PayPal, with which Steam is always confused about where I am and whether it should charge me in GBP or EUR. I'm never not using Bitcoin again.


What about refunds? With Paypal you know you're getting the same amount back, in the same currency, as if you haven't bought anything at all. Given the fluctuating nature of Bitcoin, surely that's not possible?

So many bitcoin haters in these comments... we'll see who's wrong in a decade or so.

I've always wondered why hackernews hates bitcoin so much. Can someone explain?

Do i get to sell my digital junk in community market for Bitcoins?

Nope. Legally you can't take money out from your Steam Wallet.

But there are 3rd party sites where you can sell your items for real money.

Tho you should only bother if you have valuable items.


OT: Is there a way to play Steam movies on Chromecast?

Seems like bitcoin won't die after all, which is a pitty. It's become a centralised mess controlled by a few ASIC producers.

Worst part is that it continues eating it's own children, as long as bitcoin is there, no other crypto currency will gain widespread adoption.


There is talk that the playing field will become more level now that the ASICs have catched up with 14 nanometer process technology. Mining equipment should no longer become obsolete every few months.

It's doing pretty well actually. It's still less centralized as all viable alternatives.

Aren't there a small group of people who essentially control all of Bitcoin with no oversight? There might be a group of 30 very wealthy early adopters, miners, main developers, people who own the communication channels, and other influencers, who have 90% of the influence in what happens with Bitcoin. Real currencies can't boast to being that centralised.

Their wealth depends on bitcoin keeping the properties it currently has. For instance they could try to merge a code change that doubles the balances for early adopters, but it would immediately destroy their wealth because people would stop using the currency.

Some examples for viable alternatives?

Normal currency which is both less centralized and easier to use.

With "normal" currencies you mean the ones issued by central banks?

Issuance may be centralized but the payment network, not so much.

Do you mean cash or Paypal & Co?

-----


Well there's none, which in the point. But.. Lightcoin, dash, monero, etc

Bitcoin is the natural currency of the deep web not a replacement of the finance sector.

It doesn't matter if it dies or not while the users of these technologies [slowly] grow and new innovations appear. Currently Bitcoin is the leader but the core concepts around cryptocurrencies/blockchain are the most important part.


Bitcoin's governance failures might yet slowly kill it.

Network effect matters. I'm still waiting for for the mess that is qwerty to die



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