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by mbmott 3702 days ago
I could see this as Steam testing the Bitcoin waters. Steam games created an entirely new market of digital items changing hands for real world money, and this is done globally across all currencies--bitcoin would be an ideal fit. I could also see value in using bitcoin to reward content creators (modders). Obviously this is crazy speculation, but seem to be solid use cases.
3 comments
drzaiusapelord 3702 days ago
I don't think this was done for any political or idealistic reason. I imagine bitcoin makes it a lot easier for purchases in countries with unreliable banking, high levels of fraud, etc. Try transfering a non-trivial amount of money to Eastern Europe, Africa, Russia, Brazil, etc. Steam deals with this millions of times a day with fraud credit attempts, legitimate credit cards being turned down, etc. Legitimate buyers can just use bitcoin and not worry about credit card shenanigans.

The "omg futurist" brownie points are just a side-effect. Steam/Valve isn't terribly progressive. Heck, its only recently that they put in a refund policy and started putting in common sense limitations on trading to stop fraud. Someone did a cost/benefit analysis here and it simply worked out. I guessing this is part of a larger anti-fraud initiative at Valve.

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mbmott 3702 days ago
That was pretty much my point. Bitcoin has a solid use case (being a global currency) and Steam is exploiting it.
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MichaelGG 3702 days ago
It's not that it's a global currency. It's that there's zero buyer protection. Or phrased positively, zero risk fit the merchant. Anyone offering that in any currency would be useful.
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clemensley 3702 days ago
> could also see value in using bitcoin to reward content creators

Me too. That's basically the mission of yours.network btw. Best way to keep in touch is the slack channel https://yours-slackin.herokuapp.com/

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mbmott 3702 days ago
I follow you guys. Looking forward to trying yours out!
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clemensley 3702 days ago
Cool! Can't wait to try it myself tbh :)
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afterburner 3702 days ago
If they're using BitPay to handle bitcoin, they're not testing anything, just accepting the same currency they always have.
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