As of today, Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method!

[dead_m92]

It doesnt mean that bitcoin is not volatile.

Maybe they are frustrated because all the bitcoins that they received are instantly converted to fiat amount (bitpay works by that way, they convert everything to fiat and then they send it to their wire account)

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

And yes, it is a shit, i dont know why a lot of services are using bitpay as intermediary, it is always converting btc to fiat and that is the only way that they could lose.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary

Probably if they kept those bitcoins, they could have much more money. But the fees are ridiculous high for the customers.

[Haslett5236]

that's a sad story heard this , but it will not problem for bitcoin , because there are still a lot of

serves accepet bitcoin payment so dont worry about this

[Pantoflascrypt017]

Will bitcoin cash replace it?

[kahc]

From the blog post:

Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, but the degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days.

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary, and Bitpay requires transactions to be sent and confirmed within 15 minutes - so the chances of BTC dropping 20% in 15 minutes are actually extremely small, and all the volatility is handled by Bitpay. The real problem here is that customers have to use high fees to get their tx included in the next block, otherwise Bitpay will have to send their transaction back.

You can't compare the volatility now with the previous years, because of the huge price gap!
Major currencies average between 0.5% and 1.0%.

And this is the volatility of BTC in US dollars per 30 days in 2017. You see the "problem"?
https://i.imgur.com/LdAZLRY.jpg

[xsaints128]

A few months ago Bitcoin was not just a store of value but also a means to transfer fund but nowadays the price is just too volatile and the bulls are just running the prices up like crazy thus making Bitcoin an asset to hold and make people rich in a week or so. The transaction cost has gone just way up making it unsuitable for small transactions like buying a game.

[Kindless]

What will they accept instead? 

Is it good news I think, because they accept major cards and there are plenity that can be loadad with btc instead.

[bribed]

This is really a sad news. Steam had done a great job by accepting Bitcoin as a payment. But times have changed now. Bitcoin hasn't been a reliable payment option lately. Longer confirmations timings, Higher transaction fee isn't what Bitcoin was actually meant to be.

Last year everyone wanted to buy things with Bitcoin as it was almost free to send it and magical. But now its a store of value used to make you rich instantly:(

So true man, I just wrote something similar in another thread. You speak out of my heart. People need to remember what Bitcoin was born for. It should be used as a digital currency and not be looked at like a commodity that grows in value. Unfortunately many people forget this nowadays.

[kokojie]

I'm not really surprised. As it is now, Bitcoin is not a good option for payment services.. the tx fees are ridiculous and confirmations take too long. Even banks do "instant" transactions nowadays, so a solution needs to be found for this.

They are starting to compare Bitcoin to gold, which at the moment is a more accurate analogy investment-wise, if you ask me.

I call bullshit. Banks do it only between accounts within the same bank. You can't have an instant transaction between different banks and you can't have money sent during weekends and at nights. I have been doing it for many years and my last transaction sent on Monday needed over 24h to appear on the account of my friend in a different bank within the same country. My another transaction that was sent on Saturday arrived on Tuesday (!) because they don't work in the evenings, nights, on Sundays, and it takes up to 48 hours anyway.

Good thing you don't have to use your checking account to buy games from Steam, you can just use a debit card.

Bitcoin can not be gold if it loses its utility. Gold/Silver became store of wealth because they have huge amount of utility in jewelry and industrial.

[erre]

This is a really bad news.
Regarding volatility, I suppose bitpay integration would solve it, fees would not be a problem as they are paid by the customers.

Evidently, they were not making huge profits with all this btc hardcore holders...

[tuiputui]

bitcoin this days is more like the mother asset in the crypto domain. People buy it to convert to fia, trade for other tokens, or stay in a safe value like the digital gold because it will eventually be more expensive than the current price.
sendings payments is not the use we do this days for butcoin... any altcoin will do that much better.

[rjp55]

this is bad news to crypto community whom expecting a widespread payment options with bitcoin or else crpyto currency.
I'll definitely choose another platform which prefers BTC or other cryptocurrency accepting in payment..

[xBitHodler]

I have never purchased anything on Steam paying with Bitcoin. I considered is a waste of my bitcoins, I don't use Steam much anyway. However, I don't understand this decision. They should have left Bitcoin as a optional method of payment for people who don't want to exchange their bitcoins to fiat. That's quite surprising because Bitcoin value is very likely to increase in the next years. Is there anything we don't know?

[CrowdFunder]

I'm pretty sure it is due to fees and not volatility. Bitcoin isn't really a viable method of payment for small transactions as most game purchases on steam are. Bitcoin is a great asset but it won't be feasible for smaller transactions until real scaling solutions come online.

[furry04]

Well btc has changed its structure and aims to be the new gold of a new era. The transaction fees are risen and transfer time has been longer recently. It s a normal thing to not accept.

[Barbut]

Should've posted the source: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613

From the business point of view of Steam, it's understable how Bitcoin isn't viable to be accepted as payment method yet, there's too much room for complaints from customers, though I think they are exaggerating with the 20$ transaction fee.
I'm ok with them putting on hold the use of cryptocurrency (BTC in this case) for the time being. Hopefully the Lightning Network is going to sort this out and Steam will accept btc again.

I read announcement and like I suspect its all about fees. High fees are killing us, 20$ fee for a game that cost 10$? I bought counter strike on steem long ago, sending bitcoins was OK, we could even claim faucets and make few dollars here and there now due fees that is not waste of time its totally useless. We can just hope that fees will be lower in the future, much lower and stable. Many people wait that.

[pera]

I hope this reality check will help to bring back the community to planet Earth...

[Xavofat]

Major currencies average between 0.5% and 1.0%.

The major currencies tend to fluctuate within a certain range (which quite gradually decreases over time).  Bitcoin, on the other hand, doesn't have any range - it could be $500-1000 one year and over $10,000 the next. 

To Steam, they look at this and even if they receive fiat money for a flat fee from BitPay (I doubt that they hold much or any of the BTC that they receive), they wonder what will happen to their customers if the range moves downwards rather than upwards.  Would they be afraid?  Would they blame Steam or complain to them?

You can imagine that it's a lot of uncertainty to them, especially when only a fairly small amount of their payments would be in BTC anyway.

[kahc]

Major currencies average between 0.5% and 1.0%.

The major currencies tend to fluctuate within a certain range (which quite gradually decreases over time).  Bitcoin, on the other hand, doesn't have any range - it could be $500-1000 one year and over $10,000 the next. 

To Steam, they look at this and even if they receive fiat money for a flat fee from BitPay (I doubt that they hold much or any of the BTC that they receive), they wonder what will happen to their customers if the range moves downwards rather than upwards.  Would they be afraid?  Would they blame Steam or complain to them?

You can imagine that it's a lot of uncertainty to them, especially when only a fairly small amount of their payments would be in BTC anyway.

That is why Bitcoin is extremely volatile, there exist non other major currencies that have a standard deviation of monthly returns of over 3%. So it is indeed wise of Steam to remove Bitcoin until it has stabilized a bit.
The worst part is if the buyers request refunds after the BTC price rise 20% or decrease 20%, either way Steam have to cover the differences.

[audaciousbeing]

This is really a sad news. Steam had done a great job by accepting Bitcoin as a payment. But times have changed now. Bitcoin hasn't been a reliable payment option lately. Longer confirmations timings, Higher transaction fee isn't what Bitcoin was actually meant to be.

Last year everyone wanted to buy things with Bitcoin as it was almost free to send it and magical. But now its a store of value used to make you rich instantly:(

It must have taken them a while to arrive at this decision but with immediate effect is the concern here that they didn't even give their users the right amount of notification in other to prepare themselves another alternative to use or made available. Its really an unfortunate thing at this time though.

The bold part is not really that part but because the value of bitcoin has greatly increased, that is why I would shout if .0008btc to pay as transaction fee today is close to 10$ compared to a little above $2 that it was not less than 6 months ago but we are all happy with the price of bitcoin not the fees that comes with it. Confirmation time is slow but its better compared to some time in the past.

[guillzini]

I'm not really surprised. As it is now, Bitcoin is not a good option for payment services.. the tx fees are ridiculous and confirmations take too long. Even banks do "instant" transactions nowadays, so a solution needs to be found for this.

They are starting to compare Bitcoin to gold, which at the moment is a more accurate analogy investment-wise, if you ask me.

I call bullshit. Banks do it only between accounts within the same bank. You can't have an instant transaction between different banks and you can't have money sent during weekends and at nights. I have been doing it for many years and my last transaction sent on Monday needed over 24h to appear on the account of my friend in a different bank within the same country. My another transaction that was sent on Saturday arrived on Tuesday (!) because they don't work in the evenings, nights, on Sundays, and it takes up to 48 hours anyway.

Good thing you don't have to use your checking account to buy games from Steam, you can just use a debit card.

Bitcoin can not be gold if it loses its utility. Gold/Silver became store of wealth because they have huge amount of utility in jewelry and industrial.

You both have some valid points.

@darkangel11 I put "instant" in quotations, because I know they're not there completely yet. Banks in general don't work in the weekends and nights, but in my country if I send money from my bank to a different bank and it's made before 12 in the afternoon, the amount will show up in the other account the same day! I think it's a small step to achieving this all day and then weekends. Especially if they want to combat Bitcoin on that front.

@kokojie I do believe Bitcoin has some similarities to gold. I've seen it happen; when the stock markets dip, people move to gold and increasingly more to Bitcoin as well. In the crypto space, Bitcoin has a similar role of stability. People go back to Bitcoin to store profits or dampen losses. But you are right; if Bitcoin loses its utility, it will no longer be used as a store of value/wealth. It actually can never BE gold because BTC is what it is and gold can be refined as you said