Accept Nano (crypto) as a feeless payment option

[Senatus]

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.

[Goku]

I second this, with the rise of cryptocurrencies it would be awesome to have them, but inefficiencies of Bitcoin means it is not fit for paymets, NANO is basically an advanced Bitcoin that actually works as intended, a Peer 2 Peer Electronic cash, 0 fees, and instant settlements over a fully decentralized network, would be a welcome addition.

[grumpyfreyr]

Oh god yes please!

[cinedine]

Автор сообщения: Senatus

• 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.

You are kidding yourself. You are STILL converting electricity into heat that cannot be converted back. There is no way around it. Yo uare wasting energy. Period.
And it doesn't matter whether you can run it on a single wind turbine. If that turbine is not running you have to get your energy elsewhere. Which in 99/100 cases mean conventional energy. Which means coal in most countries.

[Senatus]

Автор сообщения: cinedine

You are kidding yourself. You are STILL converting electricity into heat that cannot be converted back. There is no way around it. Yo uare wasting energy. Period.
And it doesn't matter whether you can run it on a single wind turbine. If that turbine is not running you have to get your energy elsewhere. Which in 99/100 cases mean conventional energy. Which means coal in most countries.

I'd normally agree with you, but Nano doesn't use mining at all. Maybe I should have described that better. It's simply confirmations on computers so to say, costing far less energy than it would cost us to run an average game for a few seconds.

[cinedine]

And these servers don't consume energy? And they don't heat up at all?

[Senatus]

They're not necessarily servers, could just be home computers like the ones we're using now. You're right that they do consume some energy, totally agreed on that. Just that most people think of crypto (because of Bitcoin) as using massive amounts of energy, and Nano is about 6 million times more energy efficient than that.

[nullable]

The wild swings in price are still really attractive to most businesses. /s

I mean I'm not against crypto currency. But you have to understand the enthusiasm people feel for it doesn't always match the reality. And in Steam's case they could accept it, but they still need to pay publishers/develop in traditional currency. So at some point Valve will need to convert that into money they can use. And depending on the price fluctuations do they take a loss, break even, score big? How long do they have to sit on a pile of crypto during a dip? All of this means a lot of work to manage effectively.

Not to mention the issues with refunds when people buy something, and then the crypto shoots up and they want a refund so they can cash in. I mean the issues become endless.

And then what percentage of Steam's userbase actually uses this particular currency? That alone may not make it worth implementing, in addition to all the other issues.

Valve learned a lot accepting Bitcoin for 20 months. You can tell yourself this other coin is completely different. But no matter how different it is, there's still a lot that's the same. And if those things are the reason (in whole or in part) that they ceased accepting bitcoin then some other coin is probably a non-starter.

[Chatt]

Автор сообщения: cinedine

And these servers don't consume energy? And they don't heat up at all?

VISA consumes more electricity per transaction than NANO. Totally agree with you that currencies like Bitcoin should be boycotted given the amount of electricity that is wasted (and the amount of GPUs that are used). NANO does not rely on miners. Please do not lump it together with Bitcoin or its forks.

[Senatus]

Автор сообщения: Snakub Plissken

The wild swings in price are still really attractive to most businesses. /s

I mean I'm not against crypto currency. But you have to understand the enthusiasm people feel for it doesn't always match the reality. And in Steam's case they could accept it, but they still need to pay publishers/develop in traditional currency. So at some point Valve will need to convert that into money they can use. And depending on the price fluctuations do they take a loss, break even, score big? How long do they have to sit on a pile of crypto during a dip? All of this means a lot of work to manage effectively.

Not to mention the issues with refunds when people buy something, and then the crypto shoots up and they want a refund so they can cash in. I mean the issues become endless.

And then what percentage of Steam's userbase actually uses this particular currency? That alone may not make it worth implementing, in addition to all the other issues.

Valve learned a lot accepting Bitcoin for 20 months. You can tell yourself this other coin is completely different. But no matter how different it is, there's still a lot that's the same. And if those things are the reason (in whole or in part) that they ceased accepting bitcoin then some other coin is probably a non-starter.

Yeah, I think this is also partly why they stopped accepting Bitcoin. The reason that I think this would be a good idea nonetheless is that because it arrives within a second without fees, the volatility issue isn't such a big deal. There are many integrations that convert the full amount into dollars (or euro's) instantly. Conversion fees tend to be just 0.1% or so, and I'm sure with the volume Steam gets it might be even lower. So the way I see it, it has the advantages of accepting crypto and having no fees, while not having the disadvantages of price fluctuation. What do you think?

As for the refunds - I'd say when you buy, you agree to a dollar or euro price. If you get a refund, you get that dollar/euro price refunded to you at the current crypto price. That shouldn't be that hard, the way I see it, right?

I think there's actually a decent percentage that uses Nano, and I think given the cost savings it would be a pretty attractive option for Steam to implement and offer as an option as every transaction done in Nano saves them fees relative to using regular payment channels.

Either way thanks for the comments. I'm pretty excited about this as you can tell because I feel it can truly add value here, but I get your concerns.

[cinedine]

Автор сообщения: Chatt

Автор сообщения: cinedine

And these servers don't consume energy? And they don't heat up at all?

VISA consumes more electricity per transaction than NANO. Totally agree with you that currencies like Bitcoin should be boycotted given the amount of electricity that is wasted (and the amount of GPUs that are used). NANO does not rely on miners. Please do not lump it together with Bitcoin or its forks.

And Visa is used by millions of peoples. Whatever crpytocurrency you name is used by a handfull of people where only the creators and ICO invesoters profit off and else they consume engery that could be spend better or doesn't need to be created at all.
Using "it's energy efficient" as a reason when it's sheer existence is a waste of energy to begin with it ridiculous.
Same with this "green" search engines btw.

[Senatus]

Автор сообщения: cinedine

And Visa is used by millions of peoples. Whatever crpytocurrency you name is used by a handfull of people where only the creators and ICO invesoters profit off and else they consume engery that could be spend better or doesn't need to be created at all.
Using "it's energy efficient" as a reason when it's sheer existence is a waste of energy to begin with it ridiculous.
Same with this "green" search engines btw.

If it uses less energy per transaction than VISA that's a good thing though, right? If we make a substitute of something that is more energy efficient then I can't really see how it's a waste of energy.

As for ICO - Nano never had an ICO. It was given away for free. See also https://medium.com/nanocurrency/the-nano-faucet-c99e18ae1202.

[cinedine]

Автор сообщения: Senatus

Автор сообщения: cinedine

And Visa is used by millions of peoples. Whatever crpytocurrency you name is used by a handfull of people where only the creators and ICO invesoters profit off and else they consume engery that could be spend better or doesn't need to be created at all.
Using "it's energy efficient" as a reason when it's sheer existence is a waste of energy to begin with it ridiculous.
Same with this "green" search engines btw.

If it uses less energy per transaction than VISA that's a good thing though, right? If we make a substitute of something that is more energy efficient then I can't really see how it's a waste of energy.

As for ICO - Nano never had an ICO. It was given away for free. See also https://medium.com/nanocurrency/the-nano-faucet-c99e18ae1202.

It doesn't replace VISA. It doesn't even come close to be at the same league as VISA in terms of transactions - and more importantly: Security and oversight.
It's an unneeded addition to what already exists. Traditional transaction services, payment methods, and even hundreds of other cryptos.

[Satoru]

Автор сообщения: Senatus

Автор сообщения: cinedine

And Visa is used by millions of peoples. Whatever crpytocurrency you name is used by a handfull of people where only the creators and ICO invesoters profit off and else they consume engery that could be spend better or doesn't need to be created at all.
Using "it's energy efficient" as a reason when it's sheer existence is a waste of energy to begin with it ridiculous.
Same with this "green" search engines btw.

If it uses less energy per transaction than VISA that's a good thing though, right? If we make a substitute of something that is more energy efficient then I can't really see how it's a waste of energy.

As for ICO - Nano never had an ICO. It was given away for free. See also https://medium.com/nanocurrency/the-nano-faucet-c99e18ae1202.

Saying it 'uses less energy' is a bald faced lie. The generation of your less-than-monopoly money consumes so much energy its laughable on its face. This is like saying a hamburger has no meat because the cow isn't alive.

[Senatus]

Автор сообщения: cinedine

It doesn't replace VISA. It doesn't even come close to be at the same league as VISA in terms of transactions - and more importantly: Security and oversight.
It's an unneeded addition to what already exists. Traditional transaction services, payment methods, and even hundreds of other cryptos.

I think we're misunderstanding each other here. I'm saying that if a service uses even less energy per transaction than Visa does, surely that's a good thing in terms of total energy usage? It would be a 1 to 1 replacement in this case. Additionally, it has no fees and settles instantly.

In terms of being an unneeded addition - in my opinion having a feeless and instant global currency to pay with is pretty fantastic. I personally don't have a creditcard, and Paypal charges some petty fees that either Steam or myself has to cough up when buying a game or buying something ingame. This offers a cheaper option that's 100% secure and publicly auditable, I genuinely think that'd be fantastic.

Edit:

Автор сообщения: Satoru

Saying it 'uses less energy' is a bald faced lie. The generation of your less-than-monopoly money consumes so much energy its laughable on its face. This is like saying a hamburger has no meat because the cow isn't alive.

I think you're confusing Nano with Bitcoin. Nano isn't mined, no energy is expended to create extra Nano since extra Nano are never created. I 100% agree with you that Bitcoin's energy usage is terrible for the planet, and that it makes no sense to add it as a payment option.

[Satoru]

Автор сообщения: Senatus

I think you're confusing Nano with Bitcoin. Nano isn't mined, no energy is expended to create extra Nano since extra Nano are never created. I 100% agree with you that Bitcoin's energy usage is terrible for the planet, and that it makes no sense to add it as a payment option.

Lets imagine a magical scenario where this was actually true (because it not)

Then just GIVE ME ACTUAL MONEY

If Nano is just an intermediary imaginary currency between actual real currencies why would I take nano. GIVE ME ACTUAL MONEY

What benefit does an imaginary intermediary currency give me? When I can get ACTUAL MONEY via literally a hundred other banking instruments

If you have the magical abilityt to send REAL MONEY to nano. SEND ME THE MONEY INSTEAD

Otherwise what are you funding Nano with? OH YEAH BITCOIN. What was that about this being 'energy saving' again?