In a blog post, released on Wednesday, Valve announced that its platform Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method.
Valve justified its decision with the “increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network.”
Over the past couple of weeks, the value of the Bitcoins has skyrocketed. As a result, the miners have started committing more time and resources to dig new coins.
The transaction fees for buying games saw a 100% increase, too. When Valve added Bitcoin as a payment method, the fee was $0.20 but it has jumped to $20 as of late.
The other major reason that made Valve remove Bitcoin from its list of available payment methods was the rapidly fluctuating value of the cryptocurrency. For instance, the game one would like to purchase costs X Bitcoins and the transaction fee costs Y Bitcoins. However, the value of the Bitcoin can increase in a few hours and the amount of Bitcoins the customer has previously paid turns insufficient for closing the transaction.
Due to the serious imbalance in payments and the additional transaction fees customers might be required to pay, Valve decided to stop supporting Bitcoin as a payment method. Company representatives announced that they might “re-evaluate whether Bitcoin makes sense for us and for the Steam community at a later date.”
Bitcoin has always been frowned upon by government institutions and although miners see a huge potential in the cryptocurrency, its popularity is hindered by the fact that bitcoins are often used for scams and fraud schemes. What is more, some countries have already clamped down on the cryptocurrency sector. As for the situation in the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to take measures against people who use Bitcoin for evading taxes or participating in online gambling activities.
