Accept Nano (crypto) as a feeless payment option

[Meides]

I'd like to suggest to add Nano, a crypto, as a payment option for Steam. My reasons for this:

1. It's a feeless crypto. The cost savings for Steam, even after using a crypto exchange to convert to USD, would be literally millions. Keep some for Steam, and pass some on to us in cheaper prices, we're all happy.
   
2. It's an instant crypto. I know Bitcoin was accepted before, but that had issues because the price would literally change between sending Bitcoin and it arriving minutes if not hours later. Nano takes literally 0.2 seconds to fully settle, and can be instantly exchanged into dollars.
   
3. It's great for the environment. Nano is extremely energy efficient, the whole network could run on the power output of a single wind turbine.
   
4. It makes it fantastically easy to purchase from anywhere in the world. When I'm abroad it's surprisingly difficult to pay for stuff on Steam. Nano knows no borders, so it seems perfect for this.
   
5. It's 100% secure. PayPal sometimes gives trouble, payment processors go offline and such. Nano has been online for over 5 years, over 70 million transactions done, with not a single missed transaction.

Implementing it shouldn't be hard, a lot of services/exchanges/businesses have done so already. If there are any difficulties, I'm sure the Nano Foundation would love to help out: https://nano.org/connect.

Thanks for considering this suggestion.

[cinedine]

引用自 Senatus：

Steam is a business. Businesses intend to make profit. They also often intend to make their customers and partners happy, because that often also increases profit. Adding Nano as a payment option increases their profit through decreased costs, makes customers happy as they'll hopefully use part of those cost savings to make games cheaper, or makes partners happy by giving more money to game developers.

Businesses NEED fiat. They need to do accounting, pay their employees and suppliers and most importantly need to file their taxes.
Adding a crypto that is completely unauseable by them adds nothing but more work and fees because they need to convert it.
The only people who would be happy are customers who have this crpyto and now don't need to pay the conversion fees themselves.

I don't know how you can ignore that one simple issue. THEY NEED TO CONVERT IT. That's where the additional fees come in. If you pay per PayPal, you have to pay the PayPal fees, allright. If you pay Nano, you now have to pay the Nano fees and whatever fees the conversion service charges to get the money to you. On a business scale.

[ReeverM]

引用自 Radene：

Adding Nano as a payment option increases their profit through decreased costs, makes customers happy as they'll hopefully use part of those cost savings to make games cheaper

Oh, it will make games cheaper? Please, I'm all ears. Do explain how Steam adopting Nano is going to convince the publishers to lower their prices.

I'm all ears.

Certainly seems like it

[Meides]

My answer is "yes".

Thanks. I think we'll have to disagree there then. I think that as of right now you may be right, because the market cap for most of these cryptocurrencies is still rather small. I think that as time goes by, and in Nano this is being demonstrated so far, the dispersion and decentralisation increases with a higher market cap and time.

People need a loaf of bread to cost the pretty much same amount of Simoleons today as it did yesterday, and people also need a loaf of bread to cost the pretty much same amount of Simoleons tomorrow. Up to 5% change per year, people will still swallow and deal with, but any fluctuation harsher than that, and you've got an economic crisis on your hands.

Stability is what people want from currency, even more than value. People need to have a stable perception of "If I have THIS MANY Simoleons, I can buy THAT MANY bottles of soda". If that changes day-to-day, you'll run into problems.

Right, and many people all around the world do not have this stability because their central bank chooses to print extra money rapidly. See Zimbabwe, see Venezuela, see Sudan, Lebanon, Ethiopia. There's no reason that cryptocurrencies are less stable on a base level - the money supply is known beforehand. It's actually funny because the stability you talk about is what crypto is intended to give. The money supplt is known beforehand, so it should in the long run be much fairer and easier to predict than a currency whose money supply can be changed at will.

That would mean that people would be having a vested interest in offloading the "value" of their Nano holdings onto others rather than increase it; since amassing more value under your own name is literally the opposite of "decentralizing" it.

And I don't see people willingly give their money away for the sake of "decentralization".

Fair. The way Nano works is with representatives. Essentially elected officials, like in a democracy. The difference here is that everyone in this democracy is aware that for the system to function as well as possible, we want to make it as difficult as possible to reach consensus between all these elected officials, and all votes are public. What then happens is that people will vote for those that do not have many votes, so as to ensure that getting a majority takes many different officials working together. 1 Nano is 1 vote in this system. So while people do definitely always want to get richer, in the bigger picture all the "rich" have an incentive to vote for different elected officials.

I'm not going to give you ad revenue.

It's free to read, I don't participate in the Medium partner program or whatever it's called. I get no revenue from it whatsoever.

And we're back to the usual. "The technology is amazing"; "It offers fantastic opportunities"; "It's a more efficient use of money".

That's not a description of anything, that's a sales pitch.

I've given the description right at the start, and have described it many times over. We're in a suggestions forum - the idea is to suggest a change you want to see and to give your reasoning for why you would like to see it implemented. I've said time and time again what my reasons are for wanting to see this implemented - for Steam the primary incentive here would be to save on costs.

Cool. Then there's no need for Steam to ever add it as a payment option as far as you're concerned.

Of course there is, because as I've mentioned a few times before it's the cheapest payment option and it makes it far easier to pay from wherever I am in the world.

Oh, it will make games cheaper? Please, I'm all ears. Do explain how Steam adopting Nano is going to convince the publishers to lower their prices. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to hear that!

As any business, Steam intends to make a profit. They do so by takinga cut from each sale from developers (from what I know?), about 30% if I remember correctly. With these 30%, they cover their development costs, payment processing costs, and a thousand other small costs. If their total costs become lower, then yes, they could either choose to just have higher profits (yay for Steam's shareholders) or choose to charge lower costs to publishers (yay for publishers), who can then choose to lower their prices commensurately or keep it all themselves. Every option in between is also a fine option. Whichever way you put it, there's a cost savings component and that extra bit of profit can land with some party within the steam ecosystem, either Steam, the developers, or the customers.

Can I just ask - what do you have against implementing this digital currency as a payment option? If you do not want to use it that's fine, I'm not suggesting we make it the mandatory payment option. But I think my arguments hold merit - it saves Steam on costs, and presumably that might mean some lower costs to you as well.

Businesses NEED fiat. They need to do accounting, pay their employees and suppliers and most importantly need to file their taxes.
Adding a crypto that is completely unauseable by them adds nothing but more work and fees because they need to convert it.
The only people who would be happy are customers who have this crpyto and now don't need to pay the conversion fees themselves.

And as I've stated time and time again, probably literally a dozen times by now, I am not suggesting Steam in any way needs to hold Nano. They can convert into USD or any other currency of their choice instantly.

At this point I have to be honest and say you are simply not reading what I am saying. You are ignoring the fact that Steam has costs associated with accepting payments through payment providers, and you are ignoring the fact that accepting Nano has a lower cost associated with it than accepting payments through regular payment providers. Can you confirm that you understand that Steam pays payment processors about 1-5% of every sale they do, and can you confirm that you understand that if they were to accept Nano they could instantly convert Nano into USD, therefore having lower costs and not holding any Nano on Steam's balance sheet for longer than a second?

I don't know how you can ignore that one simple issue. THEY NEED TO CONVERT IT. That's where the additional fees come in. If you pay per PayPal, you have to pay the PayPal fees, allright. If you pay Nano, you now have to pay the Nano fees and whatever fees the conversion service charges to get the money to you. On a business scale.

Yes. Simple as I can make this.

Paypal: Fee of 1.5% (I'm being generous here).
Nano: Fee of 0 on the Nano network, then 0.1% to convert to USD.

On a business scale? Savings of 1.4%, on every. single. payment that pays in Nano. All combined that could very well be millions of dollars saved in costs.

[cinedine]

Jesus ... stop with this "it saves costs". It doesn't.
Nano is a middle man. Whatever service you use is a service that will want to get paid and that will increase costs.

You earlier said you used it to transfer money cross borders:
So how did you get that money converted into Nano?
How did your friends converted it back into Nano?
By a crypto-exchange that used a payment service they had to pay and taking additional fees to make a profit. The 0.1 % they take? That's what they pay their incurring fees from. Same like Steam pays their fees from the 30 % cut they take from game sales.
There is no way around banking fees and transaction fees. Someone has to pay them.

[Meides]

引用自 cinedine：

Jesus ... stop with this "it saves costs". It doesn't.
Nano is a middle man. Whatever service you use is a service that will want to get paid and that will increase costs.

You earlier said you used it to transfer money cross borders:
So how did you get that money converted into Nano?
How did your friends converted it back into Nano?
By a crypto-exchange that used a payment service they had to pay and taking additional fees to make a profit. The 0.1 % they take? That's what they pay their incurring fees from. Same like Steam pays their fees from the 30 % cut they take from game sales.
There is no way around banking fees and transaction fees. Someone has to pay them.

I already have Nano, but let's say I want to go from fiat to Nano. I send it to my exchange. This costs me nothing. I convert into Nano. 0.1% approximately. I send it to my friend. He converts it into AUD. 0.1% fees. He withdraws to his bank. No fees.

So yes, it saves costs. It saves costs relative to the commonly used Steam payment options, as listed:

PayPal.
Visa.
MasterCard.
American Express.
Discover.
JCB.

All those have far, far higher costs than accepting payment in Nano and converting into USD. There is literally no arguing against that because it's simply the truth, I don't know how else I can make that clear.

There are no ways completely around fees, unless you use the Nano network exclusively. But there are, very clearly, as I have demonstrated here time and time again, lower fee options even if you want to end up with dollars.

I genuinely hope that most reading this thread understand this and that it's just the 2 or 3 of you that I can't get through to. Seeing as this thread got some awards I'm hopeful, but I'd love some more feedback on it.

[Radene]

引用自 Senatus：

As any business, Steam intends to make a profit. They do so by takinga cut from each sale from developers (from what I know?), about 30% if I remember correctly. With these 30%, they cover their development costs, payment processing costs, and a thousand other small costs. If their total costs become lower, then yes, they could either choose to just have higher profits (yay for Steam's shareholders) or choose to charge lower costs to publishers (yay for publishers), who can then choose to lower their prices commensurately or keep it all themselves. Every option in between is also a fine option. Whichever way you put it, there's a cost savings component and that extra bit of profit can land with some party within the steam ecosystem, either Steam, the developers, or the customers.

Uhm...."shareholders"?

[cinedine]

引用自 Senatus：

引用自 cinedine：

Jesus ... stop with this "it saves costs". It doesn't.
Nano is a middle man. Whatever service you use is a service that will want to get paid and that will increase costs.

You earlier said you used it to transfer money cross borders:
So how did you get that money converted into Nano?
How did your friends converted it back into Nano?
By a crypto-exchange that used a payment service they had to pay and taking additional fees to make a profit. The 0.1 % they take? That's what they pay their incurring fees from. Same like Steam pays their fees from the 30 % cut they take from game sales.
There is no way around banking fees and transaction fees. Someone has to pay them.

I already have Nano, but let's say I want to go from fiat to Nano. I send it to my exchange. This costs me nothing. I convert into Nano. 0.1% approximately. I send it to my friend. He converts it into AUD. 0.1% fees. He withdraws to his bank. No fees.

No fees ... FOR YOU.
Just like I don't have to pay any fees using PayPal to charge my Steam Wallet.
The exchange is covering your fees for depositing and withdrawal using the 0.1 % they charge you for conversion.

And these conversion fees are actually done on virtual money. They don't have to pay anyone any fees at this point. They exist to drain the existing money from circulation, similar to Steam's 15 % market fees.

And these "non fees" are for private users. If I were a business withdrawing thousands of dollars daily, do you think they just eat it? That's why such services have merchant fees. That's why payment services have a minimum amount fee per transaction.
If Steam would use coingate for example, they have to pay 3 % fees on every transaction.
https://coingate.com/pricing

[SwampMoccasin]

3% is no worse than what credit card companies charge. What's the big deal? If they decide to keep that 15% market fee as Nano, it reduces the fee even further.

[cinedine]

引用自 SwampMoccasin：

If they decide to keep that 15% market fee as Nano, it reduces the fee even further.

They can't. A company needs to pay taxes. How do you declare 24,530 Nano or 0,0213 Bitcoin? How much income tax to you pay for it?

[SwampMoccasin]

引用自 cinedine：

引用自 SwampMoccasin：

If they decide to keep that 15% market fee as Nano, it reduces the fee even further.

They can't. A company needs to pay taxes. How do you declare 24,530 Nano or 0,0213 Bitcoin? How much income tax to you pay for it?

They use the value at the time of transaction. Don't worry, they have Quikbooks.

[Max]

引用自 cinedine：

Jesus ... stop with this "it saves costs". It doesn't.
Nano is a middle man. Whatever service you use is a service that will want to get paid and that will increase costs.

You earlier said you used it to transfer money cross borders:
So how did you get that money converted into Nano?
How did your friends converted it back into Nano?
By a crypto-exchange that used a payment service they had to pay and taking additional fees to make a profit. The 0.1 % they take? That's what they pay their incurring fees from. Same like Steam pays their fees from the 30 % cut they take from game sales.
There is no way around banking fees and transaction fees. Someone has to pay them.

NANO has no middle man or transaction fees. You can transfer NANO hundreds of times near instantly per day without a fee. It's true that an exchange however would try to take a small % in fees. Unless you do a P2P purchase and buy it off someone else directly who has NANO.

[cinedine]

引用自 Max：

引用自 cinedine：

Jesus ... stop with this "it saves costs". It doesn't.
Nano is a middle man. Whatever service you use is a service that will want to get paid and that will increase costs.

You earlier said you used it to transfer money cross borders:
So how did you get that money converted into Nano?
How did your friends converted it back into Nano?
By a crypto-exchange that used a payment service they had to pay and taking additional fees to make a profit. The 0.1 % they take? That's what they pay their incurring fees from. Same like Steam pays their fees from the 30 % cut they take from game sales.
There is no way around banking fees and transaction fees. Someone has to pay them.

NANO has no middle man or transaction fees. You can transfer NANO hundreds of times near instantly per day without a fee. It's true that an exchange however would try to take a small % in fees. Unless you do a P2P purchase and buy it off someone else directly who has NANO.

Nano IS the middle man. You pay whatever to purchase Nano (or whatever crypto) and pay Steam with it. Steam will then have to convert it back into fiat.

[SwampMoccasin]

引用自 cinedine：

引用自 Max：

NANO has no middle man or transaction fees. You can transfer NANO hundreds of times near instantly per day without a fee. It's true that an exchange however would try to take a small % in fees. Unless you do a P2P purchase and buy it off someone else directly who has NANO.

Nano IS the middle man. You pay whatever to purchase Nano (or whatever crypto) and pay Steam with it. Steam will then have to convert it back into fiat.

Visa, MasterCard, etc. is a middleman. Yet, no rally to remove them as a payment option? Why not?

Nano is only a middleman only if buyer or seller want to convert. Even then, the exchange is the middleman, not Nano. With Nano to Nano transactions there is no middleman, only pure p2p.

You can yell middle man, but point to exchanges and current payment solutions, not Nano.

[PieceOfMind]

引用自 cinedine：

No fees ... FOR YOU.
Just like I don't have to pay any fees using PayPal to charge my Steam Wallet.
The exchange is covering your fees for depositing and withdrawal using the 0.1 % they charge you for conversion.

I think you're misunderstanding something here. You think an exchange is 'covering the fees' for depositing and withdrawing. Nano is quite different from the majority of cryptocurrencies because its network has zero fees for transactions. It's designed from the outset to be as low-cost on its participants as possible, mainly by avoiding the extremely costly energy-intensive Proof-of-Work mining that is used to achieve consensus in most cryptocurrencies. An exchange accepting a Nano deposit or processing a Nano withdrawal to a user is not paying anyone any fees. So they're not 'covering the fees' with their 0.1% trading fee because the fee is non-existent.

It's fairly unique as a cryptocurrency and something worth looking into, mainly because it's been able to solve some of the issues that have plagued first generation cryptocurrencies. Whether you or I like it or not, it's going to be around for a long time. I even managed to earn some from a faucet here on a Steam game - Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Mod Role-Playing server (JC2RP).

[Otonashi]

引用自 cinedine：

Nano IS the middle man. You pay whatever to purchase Nano (or whatever crypto) and pay Steam with it. Steam will then have to convert it back into fiat.

You can earn a decent amount of Nano without buying it, from playing games and such. More than enough to buy a handful of mtx or cheap indie games.

Steam accepts many kinds of fiat. US Dollars. UK Pounds. Japanese Yen. Mexican Pesos. Canadian Rubles. Brazillian Reals. Are these middlemen? Or are they not, because the middlemen known as Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, etc. convert them for you?