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Cool. This type of market is perfect for Bitcoin: 1. worldwide - which gives them large customer base without access to other methods of payments (unlike US wh

Cool. This type of market is perfect for Bitcoin: 1. worldwide - which gives them large customer base without access to other methods of payments (unlike US where it's really hard to convince customers to use BTC instead of Credit Cards); 2. Digital goods with licenses that can be revoked - so the merchant doesn't have to worry (too much) about confirmations/double spends and is able to "ship the goods" instantly. They obv have to factor the potential case of tx not going through into their flow to catch these but it can be done without impacting their users whose txs do get confirmed.

seanalltogether 11y ago
Does steam have to worry about transaction confirmation? I would've assumed that bitpay guarantees the funds to their partners regardless of any potential bitcoin shenanigans.
- ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
  Looking at bitpay's docs (this is a pretty typical setup), merchant is getting IPNs (aka Webhooks) with invoice statuses based on what is happening with that payment on the Bitcoin network - https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states. So yes, as a merchant it's up to you if you want to wait until the funds are there (invoice status == 'Complete') or ship as soon as the payment is detected ('Paid' status). Bitpay will obv guarantee for the funds to be there when status moves to 'Complete' otherwise they are risking to get hit with a double spend.
  - the_rosentotter 11y ago
    A transaction would have to be worth thousands of dollars to be worth the effort of setting up a successful double spend attack. For the vast majority of use cases this concern doesn't enter into the picture at all, and an immediate 0-conf transaction is fine.
    - ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
      Double spends are actually not that difficult, much easier to implement than a fraudulent Credit Card transaction for example. In addition to double spends there are also things like volatile mainnet confirmation times etc. Which is why bitpay won't fund the merchant until 6 confs on the bitcon network.
- andypants 11y ago
  No, because valve can always remove your purchases from your steam library if necessary.
  - ThatPlayer 11y ago
    It might be slightly more complicated with the addition of tradable items such as keys, but they probably already have some sort of system to deal with it as credit card chargebacks/fraud will require the same thing.

seanalltogether 11y ago

Does steam have to worry about transaction confirmation? I would've assumed that bitpay guarantees the funds to their partners regardless of any potential bitcoin shenanigans.

ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
Looking at bitpay's docs (this is a pretty typical setup), merchant is getting IPNs (aka Webhooks) with invoice statuses based on what is happening with that payment on the Bitcoin network - https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states https://bitpay.com/docs/invoice-states. So yes, as a merchant it's up to you if you want to wait until the funds are there (invoice status == 'Complete') or ship as soon as the payment is detected ('Paid' status). Bitpay will obv guarantee for the funds to be there when status moves to 'Complete' otherwise they are risking to get hit with a double spend.
- the_rosentotter 11y ago
  A transaction would have to be worth thousands of dollars to be worth the effort of setting up a successful double spend attack. For the vast majority of use cases this concern doesn't enter into the picture at all, and an immediate 0-conf transaction is fine.
  - ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
    Double spends are actually not that difficult, much easier to implement than a fraudulent Credit Card transaction for example. In addition to double spends there are also things like volatile mainnet confirmation times etc. Which is why bitpay won't fund the merchant until 6 confs on the bitcon network.
andypants 11y ago
No, because valve can always remove your purchases from your steam library if necessary.
- ThatPlayer 11y ago
  It might be slightly more complicated with the addition of tradable items such as keys, but they probably already have some sort of system to deal with it as credit card chargebacks/fraud will require the same thing.