A few days ago, Steam stopped accepting Bitcoins with their payment system. In a statement they wrote:
“As of today, Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method on our platform due to high fees and volatility in the value of Bitcoin.
In the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network. For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically.”
The Bitcoin conspiracy
Now, why is this a conspiracy? They just decided to stop using it because of the fees and volatility? No, this can’t be – here’s why:
What made me suspicious is their use of BitPay. BitPay is a payment gateway that protects businesses from volatility. Here’s an image of how BitPay works:
As we can see, Valve would not feel any effect of the Bitcoins volatility. They also state that the transaction fee topped out at 20$, which is true – but only for a day. At the time of writing, it takes about 5$ to get the transaction confirmed in a somewhat fast manner. While I agree, that this is quite high users can still pay less and wait a bit longer.
Why was the Bitcoin removed
Personally, I believe that the volatility argument is a just a pretext to remove the BTC. With the Bitcoins Price surge it has gained a lot of attention and the other payment processors might feel threatened. Unfortunately, there are no more things that would lead to a more detailed conspiracy theory, but feel free to investigate yourself.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the Bitcoin was removed not because of its volatility but because of another unknown reason. Keep your eyes open!
I’ll keep this post updated, comment down below if you have something to say about the Bitcoin Conspiracy!
