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Comment by lawn | Hacker News Reader

And you could indeed use Bitcoin on Steam for a while!

But then the blocks got full, fees and wait times skyrocketed, and in response to the customer backlash Steam removed Bitcoin.

Meanwhile Bitcoiners were (and still are) only focused on number go up instead of other, more productive, use cases.

Such a waste.

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They built the lightning network, it's meant for this use case.

Unfortunately it's shit at it. The user experience of using another currency or hell even just Bitcoin is far superior.

There's now Ethereum, Base and Solana featuring US dollar stablecoins and significantly cheaper fees. If you want to go a step further and eliminate the stablecoin issuer's counterparty risk you could even pay in the base asset of ETH. Shopify allows payments from crypto now, so Steam should try it again.

Good luck censoring purchases on ETH.

Even stablecoins aren't so great for the environment. Proof of stake isn't as bad, but also doesn't offer much beyond traditional systems once KYC is needed.

Am I missing something?

Stablecoins are great. The only way to be debanked is if the stablecoin issuer explicitly blacklists your address, which is a public act which they will be forced to justify.

And Ethereum's Proof of Stake algorithm is highly censorship resistant. That's why it took seven years to design.

There are plenty of alternatives to Bitcoin payments in the crypto space.

The problem isn't technical, the problem is getting people to care.

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