Steam no longer accepting Bitcoin as payment method

The posted therefore concluded that “At this point, it has become untenable to support Bitcoin as a payment option” but left open the option of revisiting the cryptocurrency in future.

Valve announced that they would no longer allow Bitcoin to used for purchasing content on Steam.

We must agree with the sentiments regarding the volatility of Bitcoin over recent months.

Over the past couple of weeks, the value of the Bitcoins has skyrocketed. While transaction rates used to be as low as 20¢ a year ago, Valve says the fees topped out at $20 last week.

Transaction fees are a part of doing business, but typically Visa or MasterCard charge businesses for every purchase made with one of their cards. Within two years, the fees as you can see have become much larger than people first anticipated.

Popular online gaming platform Steam is dropping its bitcoin payments feature, citing chronic problems with the cryptocurrency’s transaction fees and volatile price.

When the value of Bitcoin drops, as it has been doing lately, it also makes the fees seem outrageous. This was when the cryptocurrency was priced at around $460 – a pittance compared to its current value, hovering close to the $14,000 mark. It lost more than 25 percent in value in just a couple days.

Essentially the price of Bitcoin moves so quickly, and so dramatically, that it’s hard to find a reasonable foothold on what video games will cost.

On Wednesday, digital distribution platform Steam announced that it will no longer accept bitcoin transactions. 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. The company is attributing its decision to cryptocurrency’s “high fees and volatility”. By using alternatives, you can continue to “hodl”.

But at time of print, the news has had little impact on the price.

The average transaction fee now costs $7, according to data from BitInfoCharts. The costs at Steam, in particular, were markedly high; in instances of refund, customers were compelled to pay the transaction cost twofold: once initially, and again when receiving refunds for original payment. However, Valve’s decision is not only understandable, but something that’s for the good of both Steam and its clients.