The $12,000 bitcoin doesn't look so stable when merchants start dropping it, now does it?
Today, Valve have decided to remove Bitcoin from Steam (the gaming platform, not the currency) as a payment method. It's a sad day to see a major retailer drop cryptocurrencies from their systems.
I myself, avoid Bitcoin at all costs, with more suppliers adding surcharges just to deal with how expensive Bitcoin is to handle (Bitpay adds handling fees, Shapeshift tapes on a $10 fee if part of your TX includes BTC). Just last month this post ended up on the front page of r/BTC highlighting how crazy Bitcoin is getting.
Wasn't Bitcoin supposed to be CHEAPER than paying by card? Unfortunately with many retailers being unaware of other cryptocurrencies, and of course "once bitten...", Bitcoin's stubbornness to fix their slow, clogged up system is going to affect us all, with merchants too afraid to touch any cryptocurrency.
What do you think about this? Discuss in the comments on what's next for Bitcoin, and other coins as we see more problems like this pop up.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613
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steem is the new way to go....bitcoin fees is less likely to reduce followiing it bullish trend, i guess many merchant will stil drop it.
Wow, we need to see if they are interested in accepting bitUSD!
Dash is in prime position for merchant adoption.
I agree. I hold DASH and use it here in Mexico at one Starbucks where we hold our DASH meetings! Arrangement through the manager. Dont be expecting all Starbucks to accept DASH!
As a currency DASH is certainly in a good position to start being adopted by retailers.
crazy run up
I agree man, I personally don't like Bitcoin that much. Yeah it was great and all at the beginning, but it has failed to evolve along with the rest of the crypto industry due to cry babies and indecision.
I personally feel it will die eventually and bring the rest of the crypto industry down with it for awhile. But it will come back. My fear is that, when bitcoin drops, so does the value of every other crypto. We need more exchanges basing prices off of something OTHER than BTC. Or we will hurt.
I dont think Bitcoin will die. It is more likely to be the staple currency that people buy into and then transfer to other cryptos to spend. This is already happening now. You cant do small transactions with Bitcoin with the fees being as they are. Steam needs to adopt STEEM as its new currency.
Think of BTC as a "store of value" like gold.
Sure, the hype has been about it being used for transactions, but that was when it wasn't a MASSIVE STORE OF VALUE!
Since then, we've seen BTC become the gold standard of cryptos: So BUY AND HODL it.
Then use your BTC Reserves (pun intended) to buy/convert to better micro-transacting cryptos that have come out since, including one that's even forked from Bitcoin for this very reason: Enter BITCOIN CASH! ("cash", get it?)
(Yes, this conversion from BTC to BCH will still cost the high fee, but it's a small price to pay when you buy say $1,000 Bitcoin, HODL IT, then a year later it's worth say $5,000 and you convert $2,000 of it to Bitcoin Cash for say $50, then use your Bitcoin Cash to buy pizza for a $.40 fee.)
To sum this up... Buy Bitcoin and hold it for long term (like a savings account). Keep adding to that reserve as often as you can. Then, buy and use Bitcoin Cash (or similar) as your "checking/debit account" for daily transactions.
Good luck, my Crypto Locos.
wokka wokka!
I thought all this segwit nonsense was meant to reduce fees? It is outrageous. Many places have never changed their fees despite the BTC value increasing wildly too
I hold bitcoin, but I always move to LTC or something else if I want to move it.
good post @someguy123 - think that you have made very valid points and I definitely think that Bitcoin is fast becoming a victim of it's own success. How will it scale to mainstream use whilst incurring fees and being so slow!?
Thanks @someguy123 for this awesome update.
It's really provoking seeing such huge transaction fees amidst the cool rise in the price of bitcoin.
I'm sure when Satoshi came up with Bitcoin, he assumed that 1000 satoshis per transaction would be considered very cheap. When a Bitcoin was worth $1 or $10 etc, it was irrelevant.
shit i wish it was 1000sat per transaction. I paid 0.0009 to send 1btc today and it took 4 hours to confirm. $12 transaction fee.
no thanks.
Eventually there will be a switch to one of the more established coins with faster speeds and cheaper fees. There's already a bunch of them they just aren't getting the recognition they deserve..... YET!
Might be worth while to hold some of the long term.
Eh people have short memories. I feel that once the Steemit Inc team feels comfortable with scalability, and can market itself correctly, it has all sorts of room to improve.
Smart move by Steam to stop accepting Bitcoin at ATH's if you think about it.
The high fees are why Bitcoin will eventually fall to a more efficient crypto. Just like so many first gen products fall to the 2nd gen that do it better.
It's a mix of everything from the clogged up bitcoin network desperately in need of being able to handle more transactions to additional fees people tag onto bitcoin. Then there's those that don't allow an option for transaction priority or just leave it stuck at some obscene value when bitcoin was at $4000.
You also have to remember that not many blockchain networks are even remotely ready for large numbers of transactions and going mainstream. Ethereum network is getting hammered just from cryptokitties, over 700K and it's in trouble. On the other hand Steem barely breaks 0.25% at 700K!!
Everyone is being blinded by this bubble action. Dollar signs in their eyes, they are ignoring the problems that BTC is no longer useful as an actual currency due to these insane fees. I really hope this bubble pops soon and all this greed goes away so we can get back to making BTC useful.
I have no idea why Steam (the game platform) wouldn't have incorporated coinpayments.net to deal with this... they could have accepted 75 different altcoins without building the solution themselves.
I have no idea why coinpayments.net didn't contact Steam and offer their service.
I have no idea why any of these things occur except for the fact that cryptocurrency and merchant acceptance is still in the stone ages.
In general, I just have no idea. :)
Yeah, unfortunately Bitcoin is just going towards the Store of Value use case. It´s definitely not suitable as a currency these days anymore. But maybe we see Litecoin taking over that part soon, who knows.
My heart hurts :'( why Gaben? :'(