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Comment on Steam payment headaches grow as PayPal is no longer usable for much of the world: Valve hopes to bring it back in the future, 'but the timeline is uncertain'

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Boddhisatva@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I had heard that Steam used to accept crypto but the volatility of the currency was a major issue. Maybe try cryptocurrency again.

Perhaps they could set up a system where they could make a sale in bitcoin or something then immediately convert to USD. They could add a processing fee to the sale to cover any conversion fees.

I know nothing about actually doing any of this beyond having bought and sold BTC in the past. I was just wondering if it would be possible.

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deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It was the support cost as far as I remember. Way too many people were too confused about how Bitcoin works.

Volatility was not the concern, at least for Valve. They’ve utilized a payment gateway that just swapped the BTC to USD right away. Which was still a single point of failure, but in case of bitcoin, the company switching a payment gateway does not affect the UX for the customer as much.

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- NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The problem was the congested network causing unreliable transactions that would take too long which would make the price too volatile.
  
  That led to too many refunds or failed payments or payments that were no longer sufficient.
  
  All of those problems can be avoided today using a stable coin not on the bitcoin network.
  
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orclev@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The fundamental flaw with all current crypto is that it’s far too volatile to use as a currency. The only reasonable use for it at the moment is as a high risk commodity which is the vast overwhelming majority of what we see. Any so called “currency” that regularly sees price swings of multiple percentage points in a day isn’t actually a currency and is unsuitable to be used as one.

Adding to this is the problem of transaction times. Actual payment systems typically have transaction times of less than a second, occasionally a second or two. Bitcoin in contrast can take multiple minutes, sometimes hours or even days to confirm a transaction. There’s no way for Valve to accept and then immediately convert Crypto to USD. The process would inherently involve at least to transactions, one to transfer the crypto to Valves wallet, then a second to transfer from Valves wallet to the exchanges wallet, and only then could Valve attempt to sell that crypto. The financial uncertainty involved in all of that is entirely unacceptable for a business.

At this moment there is only one potentially viable way of approaching this and it’s government regulation of some kind. Either government needs to regulate that payment processors get no say in the contents of customers business, or else they need to regulate the adoption of a neutral digital payment system. One possible example of what that could look like would be the GNU Taler system which might eventually become a payment system in Switzerland but isn’t yet.

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- spicehoarder@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Genuine question, but what about stable coins?
  
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- tekato@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Your debit card transaction does not happen in seconds, it actually takes days to complete.
  
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  - orclev@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes, but actually no. In the strictest sense that is true in that it isn’t “officially” settled typically for a day or two. However, the reason why businesses are willing to accept credit card transactions is that there’s a soft approval that happens pretty much instantly and weeds out nearly every non-fraud instance of non-payment. Once that soft approval comes back (which remember happens within a second or two) the retailer can be confident that the card is tied to a valid account, that has a large enough balance to cover the transaction, and barring fraud dispute it will go through and they’ll get paid. If something were to go wrong in that process there’s also banks and the CC processor that the business could go after in court to get their money.
    
    In contrast crypto takes several minutes to go through if not significantly longer, and if something goes wrong in that process there’s no legal recourse of any kind. If a business were to allow product to leave their store prior to that minute+ approval process and it fails, they’re screwed, they just have to eat that cost.
    
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    tekato@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes. That’s why cryptocurrencies won’t work in a physical store because the customer would have to stay in store for several minutes until the merchant can release the product.
    
    But this is not an issue for online marketplaces like Steam. Customers should be willing to wait 10-20 minutes to get their video game key, or for Amazon to start processing a delivery. Faster cryptocurrencies like Litecoin actually take around 3 minutes to confirm transactions. Mullvad’s model is pretty good, where your account doesn’t get updated until the transaction is confirmed.
    
    It sounds like a good compromise, unless dealing with payment processor policies is not as bad as they make it sound.
    
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- ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Either government needs to regulate that payment processors get no say in the contents of customers business, or else they need to regulate the adoption of a neutral digital payment system.
  
  I think it’s more likely for me to win the mega jackpot, and I don’t even buy lottery tickets.
  
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- swelter_spark@reddthat.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Bitpay allows companies to accept crypto payments and receive it as real currency automatically.
  
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  - deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Wait. Bitpay is still around? That was the company Valve has used before. It was the de-facto standard for every eshop accepting bitcoin. Until they decided to implement identity checks, and only support payment from wallets implementing certain protobuf-based payment protocol. Which made them slide into obscurity pretty fast.
    
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    swelter_spark@reddthat.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s still around. Last time I used it, it only required identity verification for amounts over $100 or so. That was a few years ago. I didn’t hear that they’d changed. That’s too bad.
    
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- Nighed@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What about the so called ‘stablecoins’?
  
  (Although those sound dodgy AF to me?, not backed 1-1 anymore?)
  
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  - Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Afaik no current stablecoin is proven via audit to be 1-1 backed, not sure if any are still claiming it.
    
    Algorithmic stablecoins on the other hand are only stableish; see the terra/luna fiasco
    
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  - misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Stablecoins are the answer here. Theoretically though if cryptocurrencies were very widely used they’d be more stable, like actual currencies (probably $100T market cap of actual use, not just investments, so not any time soon).
    
    Note stablecoins have “institutional/existential” risk. Dai is decentralized but as seen with Terra/Luna they can be attacked in many ways.
    
    Generally… Just keep a small balance in crypto, whatever you plan to spend in the next few months.
    
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  - LunaChocken@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Stable coins… Aka gold? I heard gold is pretty stable.
    
    Yes sir, I’d like to buy this game with this bar of gold. At Steam’s headquarters.
    
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    Nighed@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Cryptocurrency that is pegged 1-1 against a normal currency. I think they have some limitations though.
    
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- Boddhisatva@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  There’s no way for Valve to accept and then immediately convert Crypto to USD.
  
  I didn’t realize that. It does seem an insurmountable problem.
  
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