Steam suspends Bitcoin support due to high fees

Greg S

Posts: 1,607   +442

As of today, Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment option. Due to the constantly rising and falling of value and ever-increasing transaction fees, users will no longer be able to purchase games or add funds to their Steam wallets using the popular cryptocurrency.

Valve notes that some Bitcoin transactions have had fees as high as $20. That's up from around $0.20 when Bitcoin support was first added. In an effort to prevent customers from wasting money on fees and to protect itself from volatility, Valve has simply decided to remove Bitcoin as an option during checkout.

In the case of rapidly changing value, offering customers refunds posed a problem for Valve. After giving customers a payment time window of several hours for their transaction to confirm on the Bitcoin blockchain, the value of the coin could have already significantly changed. When a gamer requests a refund, it left a gray area as to whether they should be refunded the US dollar equivalent of their transaction or if they should just have their Bitcoin returned to them.

Steam's original policy was to refund the original payment method back to the buyer or request additional Bitcoin to cover the change in value. This created a poor user experience and also had the side effect of requiring the buyer to pay a second Bitcoin network fee when sending additional currency.

Valve is not necessarily done with cryptocurrency even though it has removed Bitcoin as a payment option. "We may re-evaluate whether Bitcoin makes sense for us and for the Steam community at a later date." Newer cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin all offer much lower transaction fees and faster confirmation times than Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin values are still raising fast so I would think it's still worth it for them, but whatever. And by the way who the heck is doing their transactions? I costs me about $1 to buy and sell Bitcoins right now.
 
Bitcoin values are still raising fast so I would think it's still worth it for them, but whatever. And by the way who the heck is doing their transactions? I costs me about $1 to buy and sell Bitcoins right now.
did you read the article? 20$ processing fees. it doesnt make any sense when you can buy with dollars for zero fees...
 
Bitcoin values are still raising fast so I would think it's still worth it for them, but whatever. And by the way who the heck is doing their transactions? I costs me about $1 to buy and sell Bitcoins right now.
The Bitcoin network.
 
The other reason they're removing BC is protecting themselves from volatility of the value. If BC value crashes, they're going to take a giant hit. So, not only do they have to support the transaction, to protect themselves, they would have to find a quick way to convert the BCs to another currency without the volatility, which would be another transaction fee.
 
did you read the article? 20$ processing fees. it doesnt make any sense when you can buy with dollars for zero fees...

And if you wait 3 days, you'll have easily made $40 in profit from it raising so fast... This was my point. Who cares about fees as long as Bitcoin rates are skyrocketing? Maybe stop taking them if it levels out or starts dropping, but right now it's up 1 to 2 thousand a day!
 
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