While I'm not the biggest fan of crypto overall this is definitely one instance where you could actually use it in a way that makes sense by offering people to pay with it instead. Only issue is converting it afterwards into fiat currency.
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That's not actually the only issue, unfortunately. Steam did in fact accept Bitcoin for a while, but it was dropped in 2017, with Newell stating:
> “We had problems when we started accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment option. 50% of those transactions were fraudulent, which is a mind-boggling number. These were customers we didn’t want to have.” [1]
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steam-co-founder-reveals-why-...
That's quite interesting, I wonder how they were fraudulent as bitcoin transactions dont have chargebacks etc. In the article they also mention that the price for the game would fluctuate which seems to indicate they actually priced the games in Bitcoin. Normally price would be Euro, USD etc and price conversion to Bitcoin would be done at check out. I guess these were the early days though =)
2017 was definitely not early. Bitcoin gained a lot of traction since 2014
It is relative to 2025. And nowadays bitcoin has instant, cheap, private Lightning payments too.
Seems like a catch-22. Crypto can’t be used like legitimate currency because it’s not used like legitimate currency, and fraud can’t be addressed because there’s no regulation and no mechanisms by which to make victims whole.
There are parts of me that can see some appeal in cryptocurrency but I can’t see any way around this, at least not without impacting what made it appealing in the first place.
I think this is the biggest problem with crypto that it will never be able to solve. Every year there are millions of dollars lost in crypto due to scams (the "send me crypto and I'll give you money" kind). The instant you have a digital good people can actually buy with crypto and sell for real money, it becomes a money laundering machine.
Like you could get money from ransomware, buy a ton of games on steam, then sell the account to a third party.
This will probably be "solved" by legally exempting stablecoins from nemo dat. Basically stablecoins will be declared clean by law so recipients don't care.
While volatility indeed can be a problem (depending on how the whole thing is setup), I fail to come up with scenario of 50% fraudulent transactions... Does anyone have links to more details on what kind of fraud they meant?
Double spend. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30478262
Accepting bitcoin payments with 0 confirmations? It shows a complete lack of understanding of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, especially in 2017 when PoW was the main driver and PoS chains weren't really mainstream.
It’s not a big deal in case of Steam – they can just pull the games from your library if the payment doesn’t go through. A bit trickier with in-game purchases (but in that case they could wait for the confirmations).
The thread from 2022 does discuss this in detail.
That's a lie. How can you even make a fraudulent bitcoin transaction?
By spending your coins twice. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30478262
Who in their right mind would not wait for at least 2-3 confirmations before approving the transaction? It sounds like a skill issue
I, as Steam user, want to pay for and play my game right now, not in 30-60 minutes.
Well, then pay with credit card. I think it's reasonable to make you wait for a bitcoin transaction. That's just how bitcoin is.
A mandatory waiting period for your horny impulse purchase doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing, anyway.
That's a solved problem in 2025. There are chains with confirmation times of around 1 second now.
well don't pay with bitcoin that has a 10 minute block time, use something near the top of this https://www.cryptosettlementtime.com
Money laundering, for one. You release some dumb asset flip and then "buy" it with your dirty crypto and Valve turns it into nice clean fiat money.
And yes, that is on Valve to prevent.
Fraudlent is accoriding to the law. If I steal your bitcoin I spend them on Steam it is fraudlent. I know cryptobros think stealing bitcoins are OK and shouldnt count as fraud but law isnt written by cryptobros.
how were they able to conclude the coins were stolen?
It’s not this. Steam accepted 0confirmations to ease the payment flow. Before the transaction would be mined into a block, the fraudster would submit a new higher priority transaction sending the payment to themselves.
If you like fake money, we have that already: Steam wallet cards