The passionate Redditors among us may have noticed that Bitcoin is no longer accepted as a payment option for paying for a gold membership with the website, instead the site has reverted back to only accepting payments via card and PayPal.
A similar thing happened with computer gaming platform Steam late last year. It’s strange that even though cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, seem to be creeping further and further into the mainstream world, big tech names like Steam and Reddit are actively preventing them on their services.
The most likely reason for this move is that it’s often difficult to get pricing right, when cryptocurrency markets fluctuate in value so much. Moreover, high transaction fees might be causing a problem, indeed this is the reason Steam backed out of allowing Bitcoin payments through their service.
Granted, this won’t affect a lot of people, but I do think there is a bigger picture to be seen here.
If Bitcoin do want to break into the mainstream and become a serious store value currency that can be spent all over the world then some emphasis needs to be placed on reducing the volatility. Maybe it’s absolutely impossible but I do feel that if the markets continue to be so unpredictable, how can stores, shops and services take Bitcoin payments over standard currency when the value of it bounces round so much?
Since Reddit is an internet forum for pretty much anything, and Steam is a service with it’s entire focus on big, powerful gaming computers, these are the sort of companies Bitcoin need to have on board first before they can even think about trying to get more commercial services on board.
To an outsider, it doesn’t look great if Reddit are backing away from this up and coming technology, if Reddit don’t want to be involved, why would a local supermarket?
I do firmly believe that both Steam and Reddit will be back on the cryptocurrency train in the near future, these moves are just precautionary in times of uncertainty. Overall though I think it doesn’t resonate a great message to the wider community, the community that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies need to be trying to impress right now.