HiGame

Digital gaming giant Valve has announced that some 18 months after adding the ability to buy games on Steam with Bitcoin, it will no longer accept BTC as a method of payment. The original decision to accept the cryptocurrency was never seen as a make-or-break affair for Bitcoin’s acceptance as legal tender, but Steam’s dominance of PC digital game distribution and the overlap between PC game enthusiasts and BTC users made it a high-profile win back in 2016. (To be clear, we’re not saying that there’s a high degree of overlap between gamers and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, so much as we’re arguing BTC is probably more popular with gamers than it is with, say, suburban Atlanta retirees.)

There are several reasons why Valve has stopped supporting BTC. First, the fees required to process transactions on the Bitcoin network have jumped, up to as high as $20, compared with just 20 cents when Valve began accepting the cryptocurrency. Second, the volatility surrounding Bitcoin has become a significant concern. The currency’s value has skyrocketed since the beginning of the year, but it’s also become much more volatile. Third — and this is an issue we’ve discussed when talking about Bitcoin’s several forks since August 1 — it can take a long time to process transactions on the network.

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