[HN Gopher] '50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam acc...
___________________________________________________________________
'50% of transactions were fraudulent' when Steam accepted Bitcoin
for payments
Author : mrkramer
Score : 368 points
Date : 2022-02-26 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| doomroot wrote:
| Context on what I believe they mean by "fraudulent".
|
| Steam back in the day used to accept 0 confirmation bitcoin
| spends. This means that the transaction has been gossiped on the
| bitcoin p2p network but had not yet been mined into a block and
| thus had minimal finality guarantees. Steam could see that they
| were going to receive a bitcoin payment (when the transaction was
| mined into a block) and would credit the users account instantly
| for a better purchase UX.
|
| Turns out anyone with some deeper understanding of bitcoin could
| construct another transaction spending the same bitcoin back to
| themselves before their original transaction was ever put in a
| block. The bitcoin community moved away from accepting '0 conf'
| transactions pretty much everywhere because of this reason.
|
| In fact the high fee era (2016-2018) saw many wallets
| incorporating this "double spend" feature into their wallets.
| This is known as RBF, "replace by fee" and is really useful when
| you need to bump your transaction up the queue. You replace your
| old transaction, that is waiting to be mined, with a new one that
| offers a higher fee to incentivize miners to add it to a new
| block.
|
| I think its rather unfortunate that 0 conf transactions were
| written off so quickly. There are many context where a 0conf tx
| makes sense, mostly IRL. But, if you are running a business
| online and you don't trust you customers you should wait 3-6
| blocks after the transaction has been mined before delivering
| your goods.
| kadoban wrote:
| Depending on what it is, 3-6 is a _lot_. For something like a
| Steam game, it seems like waiting for 1 should be more than
| enough.
|
| I say "more than enough" because can't they just revoke the key
| of whatever was purchased if it gets double-spent? Seems easy
| enough.
| doomroot wrote:
| > it seems like waiting for 1 should be more than enough.
|
| Not in bitcoin land, orphaned blocks happen a few times a
| day: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2170/how-
| often-f...
|
| If you're willing to tolerate this risk then by all means go
| for it.
|
| (I'm with you I think steam should be able to tolerate this
| risk.)
| bavell wrote:
| FYI the answer in that link is from 2013, not sure how much
| it's changed since then but I doubt it's the same today.
| LanceH wrote:
| You say wait 3-6 blocks -- which makes sense for large
| transactions, but are there cases where 1 blocks have been
| getting reversed? Is this happening now because some parts of
| the network are on stale or diverging info?
| doomroot wrote:
| These are called "orphan blocks" and they happen very
| regularly, like everyday.
|
| https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2170/how-
| often-f...
| marcus_cemes wrote:
| > There are many context where a 0conf tx makes sense, mostly
| IRL.
|
| I'm curious, like what? To me this is more like "someone wrote
| a cheque but there's no guarantee that they'll give it to you".
| doomroot wrote:
| Anything where the buyer doesn't leave 15-30 mins after
| making the payment or the purchaser is id'd.
| anonporridge wrote:
| This is why it's always been absurd to believe that
| standard retail purchases would be regularly done with
| layer 1 base chain transactions. You can't even say that
| you're ok with waiting for 1 block confirmation, because
| the time between each block is only an average of 10
| minutes, with high variance. It's fairly common to
| experience over an hour between blocks, or as little as a
| minute.
|
| The security and confirmation of a transaction is not a
| function of number of blocks, but time since inclusion in a
| block and total amount of work (hashes) piled on top of
| your transaction. Generally, 6 blocks (1 hour on average)
| is considered sufficient certainty of immutability for
| normal functioning of the blockchain (i.e. not under active
| attack). One hour for final, and completely irreversible,
| settlement is absurdly fast in the context of the
| traditional financial system, which takes days at least for
| final settlement, and can be much longer for some
| international transfers.
|
| Small, individual scale purchases only really make sense to
| do on higher layer transaction protocols, like lightning
| network (non-custodial and open) or some custodial networks
| (like a bitcoin backed Visa credit card).
|
| The only model that makes sense for bitcoin is the layer
| one base chain is a settlement network, with payment
| networks build on top that aggregate many transactions into
| one on chain transaction. Think OSI model for networking.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > The only model that makes sense for bitcoin is the
| layer one base chain is a settlement network, with
| payment networks build on top that aggregate many
| transactions into one on chain transaction. Think OSI
| model for networking.
|
| Do you think this applies to cyrptocurrencies that has
| faster confirmations/block generation? Or is only
| important when there is a lengthy confirmation?
| anonporridge wrote:
| The only thing that really matters is how much work has
| been built up on top of the transaction. Shorter block
| times doesn't change that function at all. In a version
| of bitcoin with 1 minute block times, the security
| guarantee of 60 blocks is identical to the current
| security guarantee of 6 blocks, because it would be
| exactly the same amount of energy going into mining to
| create immutability.
|
| The amount of work (hashes) represents a real world cost
| (electricity and mining chips) that can't be undone
| without massive commitment of these real world resources.
|
| This is the foundation of why bitcoin works.
|
| So basically, people who say their blockchain with
| shorter block times is "faster" are either fools who
| don't understand what's going on or conmen trying to pump
| and dump their bags. Layer one transaction confirmation
| is about settlement finality, not how fast you can pay
| for coffee.
| bavell wrote:
| Great answer. This is related in my mind to the framing
| of crypto "pointlessly wasting" electricity - it's
| actually a fundamental part of securing the network by
| making it prohibitively expensive to reverse or modify
| mined blocks. I'm open to alternatives to PoW but so far
| it's been the most successful tool to solve this problem.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Proof of work is an alternative to military spending.
|
| Proof of stake doesn't solve this problem, as the top
| stakers end up needing to control (or get coopted by) the
| monopolies on violence. The traditional banking system is
| effectively an obscured proof of stake system.
|
| Proof of work also has the nice feature that every watt
| of energy used to acquire and secure bitcoin is a watt
| that can't be used for violence.
|
| You might like the work of Jason Lowry, a US Space Force
| Major who's currently studying bitcoin conceptualized as
| a new kind of military technology,
| https://twitter.com/JasonPLowery
| 3np wrote:
| > Proof of stake doesn't solve this problem, as the top
| stakers end up needing to control (or get coopted by) the
| monopolies on violence
|
| How so? Assuming (pseudo-)anonymity for stakers is
| possible.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Long lasting anonymity of stakers is impossible.
| Eventually, everyone will be tracked down. There's too
| much power at stake to remain hidden from establishment
| power forever.
|
| And anonymity of stakers who have unassailable control of
| the network consensus is exactly the problem. If you
| don't know who the king is or where he lives, then the
| peasants have zero ability to countervail his control
| authority when he starts abusing his power. No sovereign
| nation or person will sign up for a system like that
| without being violently coerced, like the US does to keep
| the rest of the world on the petrodollar standard.
| schoen wrote:
| I think the faster block times help with conceivably
| making it possible to use 1 confirmation instead of 0
| confirmations for in-person transactions, as opposed to
| than 60 instead of 6. That tilts the odds of winning in a
| double-spend fraud attempt in favor of the merchant quite
| a bit, compared to 0 confirmations, although I don't know
| how to model by how much.
|
| (You could empirically estimate by how much by looking at
| abandoned chain history in a real network, though.)
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Instantaneous payments exist, I use them several times a
| day, with traditional banking. I never quite understood
| what problem bitcoin was supposed to solve beyond
| anonymity.
| anonporridge wrote:
| These are instant payments, not instant settlement.
|
| Your bank abstracts the underlying inter bank settlement
| complexity and aggregates all the minor transactions and
| transfers that individuals do to a small number of larger
| settlement transactions, likely on the SWIFT network.
|
| When you make a payment, that transfer of money isn't
| instantly settled. The instantaneous feeling is a service
| that the bank provides you, but it's an illusion. There
| are similar experiences being built now on top of
| bitcoin, like http://strike.me, although the lightning
| network that Strike and CashApp are building upon
| actually is instant finality, unlike Visa/Paypal.
|
| This is why comparing bitcoin to Visa or PayPal is
| fundamentally flawed, since those are both layer 2/3
| networks on top of SWIFT.
|
| The proper comparison is with other settlement networks
| that create finality, like SWIFT. Where SWIFT may take
| days to create final settlement of a transfer, bitcoin
| takes ~1 hour depending on how much confidence you want.
| Where SWIFT is secured by nation state monopolies on
| violence and global banking gatekeeping, bitcoin is
| secured by the most powerful computer network on the
| planet that no single nation state has the power to
| disrupt. Bitcoin is open and permissionless and anyone
| and everyone can join. SWIFT is tightly permissioned
| because it relies heavily on exclusive networks of humans
| who trust each other.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| At a high level this comment is correct, but SWIFT is not
| a settlement network. A message on the network does not
| actually represent the movement of money between
| accounts.
| smolder wrote:
| Bitcoin only gives you a pseudonym wallet ID. I'd say
| it's less anonymous than cash, since everyone has the
| ledger.
| [deleted]
| qvrjuec wrote:
| I think more like "someone wrote a check and there's no
| guarantee it won't bounce". So really, it's quite analogous
| to how 0conf works in practice.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| There are laws in place that specifically handle writing
| bad checks. While I'm sure double-spending Bitcoin
| transactiosn is illegal _in some way_ , it is probably
| covered under a more nebulous fraud-type statute.
|
| I'd be curious to see the percentage likelihood on both, as
| well, as I suspect they are very different. Would
| businesses accept checks if half of them were bad?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The general fraud crimes you would get convicted of have
| a pretty nasty set of penalties. But good luck convincing
| a federal prosecutor to care about $20 worth of online
| goods that can be revoked.
| alickz wrote:
| I only have a layman understanding of bitcoin, and I've never
| used a cheque in my life, but would it not be more like
| "someone wrote you a cheque and there's no guarantee it won't
| bounce when you try to cash it in"?
|
| Which, again maybe showing my complete lack of knowledge of
| cheques, is how I thought they worked in the first place.
| onion2k wrote:
| Here in the UK we had "cheque guarantee cards" -
| essentially a debit card without a live connection to the
| bank. When you wrote the cheque the shop took your card
| details as well and that meant the bank guaranteed to cover
| the value of the cheque if it bounced (up to a maximum
| amount). If your cheque bounced your account went into an
| overdraft for that amount plus a hefty fee. It meant shops
| didn't need to worry about bounced cheques which customers
| could pay using them. It worked pretty well.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Watch "Catch me if you can" for some fun history on bank
| cheque fraud.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Personal check is a quasi-promissory note binded whose
| legal-teeth for recovery through law enforcement. "0-conf
| bitcoin" has no legal teeth for recovery ... yet so there
| is no enforcement (except for the merchant to chase after
| the scofflaw). "Money is forthcoming".
|
| Bank cheque is a bank-guarantee binded by banker self-
| verification (almost always good) with no takeback
| (voiding) mechanism. "block-chain confirmed" is always a
| good transaction with no clawback mechanism so you must
| wait until it's confirmed before receiving your
| merchandise.
|
| "Cash is king."
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| > has no legal teeth for recovery ... yet so there is no
| enforcement
|
| In this case, Steam was selling a digital good that they
| could be fully revoke if the funds never arrived, so the
| check ability works very well.
|
| It would have been even better on a smart contract
| platform where the game license would exist on the chain
| itself and couldn't be purchased via a double spend,
| Chain re-orgs would also sort themselves out in a fully
| on-chain system.
| ezoe wrote:
| You don't even need to do anything on bitcoin side if you value
| the 0 confirmation. You offer the goods or services before you
| receive the payment. It's like a restaurant that serve the food
| first and receive payment later. The restaurant do that because
| they trust the customer to pay up.
| elcomet wrote:
| This doesn't work,people don't know the amount to pay before
| they finish their meal.
| hayd wrote:
| You pay up front in most cafeterias for example.
|
| More likely the reason this isn't done is to allow
| customers to buy more (drinks/dessert, do so in a single
| transaction, and tip post-service. Not because the amount
| is unknown.
| aasasd wrote:
| > _and you don 't trust you customers_
|
| Seeing as "remember the password" does about nothing in the
| desktop app on my own machine near which only I ever come--
| Steam's attitude toward the users is crystal clear, and I'd say
| it's weird that they lived almost two years with that
| arrangement.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Convenience and security are always in tension - and steam
| account takeovers are very common, as they can have tradable
| assets worth hundreds or thousand of dollars.
| delusional wrote:
| In the same era steam stored your password on disk if you
| used "remember my password".
| exitb wrote:
| Shouldn't it make most sense in contexts exactly like Steam,
| where the merchant can take the goods back in case of a
| fraudulent transaction?
| gambiting wrote:
| It did, and they did. That's probably exactly why they
| allowed it like that in the first place - if the transaction
| is fraudulent then simply remove the user's entitlement, but
| offer instant access for better experience.
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| "Fraud" and "simply" don't belong in the same sentence.
| This is coming from someone who's spent years working with
| many fraud departments in major companies. Wack-a-mole
| doesn't work, they just scale their account creation.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well then please explain what is difficult here. You
| initiate a purchase with bitcoin, valve instantly grants
| you access, then few hours later valve checks if the
| transaction has been confirmed in the blockchain or not.
| If it hasn't, then the entitlement is removed. What's not
| simple about it?
| srcreigh wrote:
| What about people who do this 10x a day to play free
| games forever?
| naniwaduni wrote:
| How much worse is this than people who do this 0.5x a day
| with 48-hour returns?
| kadoban wrote:
| What whack-a-mole? Just automate it so if it gets double-
| spent, you revoke the key. If you really feel like it,
| cancel the account if they keep doing it, but I'm not
| sure you even need to bother. What have you lost? The
| bandwidth to download the game?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| > Steam back in the day used to accept 0 confirmation bitcoin
| spends. This means that the transaction has been gossiped on
| the bitcoin p2p network but had not yet been mined into a block
| and thus had minimal finality guarantees.
|
| Why? Why would anyone ever accept this?
| philsquared_ wrote:
| Because I am pretty sure it isn't true. I am one of the few
| people who used bitcoin on steam during this time and I don't
| remember it ever being instant. I would like to see
| clarification to the top point because I don't think it is
| true...
|
| In my opinion when he says "fraudulent" he is probably
| talking about how people would use it to avoid bans. Steam
| would track banned users that remake accounts by checking
| their CC. They would also verify the people by making sure
| the address on the CC was close or the same to the address on
| the account.
|
| With Bitcoin you could avoid any tracking from remaking an
| account which leads to more 'bad actors' using Bitcoin. For
| reference you needed to spend something like $5 - $10 to
| enable trading on the platform. From their people would
| phish, scam, and break the TOS on the account.
| doomroot wrote:
| I used bitcoin all the time on steam and there was a time
| when they were using 1 conf but the majority of the time
| they used 0 conf with bitpay. Couldn't find anything
| official with a quick goog but here is a reddit comment
| from 5years ago corroborating 0 confs on steam: https://www
| .reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6arpvq/comment/dhg...
| philsquared_ wrote:
| It is possible I am incorrect then. I remember it always
| taking 5 - 10 minutes before any funds hit my account. I
| never actually counted the confirmations so it is very
| possible I am just wrong and they were doing 0 conf. At
| the same time I am surprised BitPay would have been
| structured this way and not experience a major attack...
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Because they can revoke your game from your steam account if
| the transaction doesn't get picked up.
| donkarma wrote:
| It was my understanding that RBF does not work by double
| spending, but by making a transaction with a much higher fee
| that depends on the parent transaction which means you would
| need to mine both to get the higher fee.
| xyst wrote:
| I am more surprised that Gabe Newell is still the CEO of
| valve/steam and it's privately owned
| woah wrote:
| Completely incoherent article. What does "fraudulent" even mean?
| Fraudulent credit card transactions for gift cards are common,
| because the gift card provides a way to cash out a stolen credit
| card number. But if a criminal has access to someone else's
| Bitcoin, it's already "cashed out".
| jayd16 wrote:
| It's not cash so it's not cashed out. Simple as that.
| deutschewelle wrote:
| I feel like your comment is unjustified and incoherent. It is
| obvious to many of us what "fraudulent" mean here, it could be
| an array of:
|
| - previously flagged wallets moving through mixers
|
| - purchases and refunds to facilitate money laundering
|
| - converting to and from steam wallet to crypto etc.
|
| It is NOT at all ambiguous which is what you are insinuating as
| the basis for not reading past the headline and discouraging
| others from doing so.
|
| Bitcoin is a public ledger where all transactions are
| PERMANENTLY recorded. The law enforcement agencies have much
| better deobfuscation tools than 10 years ago and the tools will
| just continue to improve as they have INFINITE resources.
|
| > But if a criminal has access to someone else's Bitcoin, it's
| already "cashed out".
|
| You are describing one type of crime that has existed far long
| before crypto as basis to discredit Gabe's claims and its an
| unconvincing argument/poorly baked logic that they tell in
| maximalist echo chambers.
|
| Rather I ask, what is it that you fear so much whenever
| criticisms are raised? Did you transfer your savings to
| purchase jpegs and other insane APY that seasoned hedge fund
| managers can't produce?
| gruez wrote:
| >It is obvious to many of us what "fraudulent" mean here, it
| could be an array of:
|
| >- previously flagged wallets moving through mixers
|
| So if someone robbed a bank, used that money to buy drugs,
| that money ended up in my hands somehow (eg. I bought from
| the same drug dealer), and I used that to buy a big mac, my
| big mac purchase is "fraudulent" as well?
|
| >- purchases and refunds to facilitate money laundering
|
| How does that even work? You can only refund to the same
| person. It's not like you can buy a game, gift it to someone,
| and have that person "refund" the game to cash out
|
| >- converting to and from steam wallet to crypto etc.
|
| There isn't an official way to convert steam wallet to crypto
|
| >It is NOT at all ambiguous which is what you are insinuating
| as the basis for not reading past the headline and
| discouraging others from doing so.
|
| 1. You say it's "NOT at all ambiguous" but you yourself
| listed 3 very different possible reasons. That sounds pretty
| ambiguous to me.
|
| 2. I skimmed the article and there isn't really much in the
| body either.
| deutschewelle wrote:
| The crux of your argument appears to be that Gabe is lying
| and not to be trusted :D
| gruez wrote:
| >that Gabe is lying
|
| Quit putting words in my mouth. I made no such claim.
|
| >and not to be trusted :D
|
| Yes, if by "not to be trusted" you mean "not to be taken
| at face value".
| ike0790 wrote:
| bitcoin should be seen in the mainstream as a universal payment
| network. I believe its best use case for the average(non-
| cypherpunk libertarian) person/company is to accept it by using a
| service that automatic exchanges it for dollars on their end.
|
| For example, someone in africa could pay .001 BTC($40 currently)
| for a game and all steam would see on their end is a debit
| transaction for $40(cash not bitcoin) in their account. It allows
| for bitcoin to be held by those who don't mind the volatile
| nature of its market value, AND allows for those wanting to
| accept without holding it in the short term. Win Win for both
| parties :)
| jayd16 wrote:
| You're forgetting the tax implications here. Steam is still on
| the hook for sales(and other) taxes. The problem was never just
| picking an exchange currency. It was the legal hurdles that
| made this complicated. Those hurdles are still there. They
| apply to everyone but especially in Valve's case as they are
| not under the radar.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > For example, someone in africa could pay .001 BTC($40
| currently) for a game and all steam would see on their end is a
| debit transaction for $40(cash not bitcoin) in their account.
|
| Transaction fees and exchange fees will diminish that received
| value and force the customer to pay a fee to pay for something.
|
| The net cost of Bitcoin transaction fees and exchange fees is
| higher than just using a random, common credit card processing
| company. It's also slower for users.
|
| Let's be real: Gamers don't really want to pay extra
| transaction fees for the privilege of sending Bitcoin and
| waiting as much as an hour or more for the transaction (my
| latest Bitcoin payment took longer than an hour) before they
| can play their game. Not when they can type in a credit number
| and get it done right away for 0 fees (or negative fees with
| reward cards)
| hogrider wrote:
| space_rock wrote:
| This article is incoherent. Say what you like about Bitcoin but
| fraudulent payments are not possible. And yes Gabe is right that
| people in crypto are criminals running scam projects
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Fraudulent payments are very much possible in the "buying stuff
| with a stolen credit card" kind of way. This is a much more
| common type of fraud than the "double spend" attacks Bitcoin
| protects against.
|
| Bitcoin is only resilient to fraud only if you define fraud as
| "violating the rules of the blockchain". Any definition of
| fraud that involves meatspace is possible.
| allisdust wrote:
| Stolen credit cards are a problem for the merchant because
| the charges could be reversed by the bank and merchant will
| incur the loss.
|
| I don't see how that is even remotely possible with Crypto.
| How did Steam lose money ? My guess is they might be
| accepting it through some payment provider (so not a true
| crypto) who has in their T&C to be able to reverse
| transactions (which must be happening in Cash on the Steam
| facing side).
| erk__ wrote:
| Yes they were using the BitPay provider when they were
| accepting Bitcoin, I assume they were made aware of that it
| was possible to track the transactions back to fraudulent
| credit card transactions, which I guess in some way could
| still make them liable for it.
| rosndo wrote:
| This is absolutely not what happened. Why come up with
| such crazy theories when this just comes down to double
| spends of unconfirmed transactions?
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Another thing was that the vast majority of those
| transactions, for whatever reason, were fraudulent, where
| people were repudiating transactions or using illegal
| sources of funds and things like that.
|
| Seems like it was multiple things and "fraud" is just a
| catch-all term and Gabe didn't bother to list everything
| that they considered to be fraud.
| Duralias wrote:
| It might not necessarily be that they lost money, it is
| possible it happened through the way you are suggesting,
| but opening up for crypto does mean Steam becomes a money
| laundering platform.
|
| Criminal creates a shit game and then uses the crypto to
| buy that game (with alt accounts) and since *very* few
| developers would be happy with getting paid in crypto,
| Valve has to convert it into fiat(?) currency.
| allisdust wrote:
| That could be a problem but then that would be money
| laundering not fraud (and Steam won't be on hook for it -
| just like Amazon isn't for its gift cards).
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The purchases are fraudulent. A single party buys the
| game from themselves many times, desiring to look like a
| diverse crowd making legitimate purchases.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Stolen credit cards are a problem for the merchant
| because
|
| Because they don't want to process illegal transactions
| with illegally acquired money, because they don't want to
| abide or facilitate criminal conduct, wherever possible.
| Life and business is not merely nor always about the
| potential to lose money through legal ramifications.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| At this point is BTC a good idea? Does it actually provide any
| damn value at all at a macro level?
| ipaddr wrote:
| It provided a great way to buy weed before it was legalized and
| transaction fees skyrocketed.
|
| Bitcoin at $5,000 a coin was extremely useful for transactions.
| Bitcoin at $50,000 make it less useful because of scaling
| issues.
| doomroot wrote:
| Have you tried lightning network its extremely fast and cheap
| and pretty reliable these days. Many great mobile wallets
| support it now, Blue wallet, Muun, Phoenix. Hell even Cash
| App supports outgoing lightning payments now. Scan a QR code
| few seconds later done, final, irreversible.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I haven't I'm use to having an account on an exchange and
| moving money directly to the account.
|
| Is there a way I could use the lightening network directly
| if my exchange doesn't use it behind the scene?
| beardog wrote:
| You're not supposed to be using an exchange for payments,
| you are meant to have a wallet, ideally a non-custodial
| one.
| mccorrinall wrote:
| You currently pay about 10 pennies for a transaction which is
| included in the next block.
|
| Using Lightning is even cheaper.
| CJefferson wrote:
| Really, googling around, average transaction fee looks
| about $1.70? Which is much more than I pay through any
| other service.
| doomroot wrote:
| It's a permission-less payment network, can you not think of a
| single thing that would be useful for?
| rabuse wrote:
| Xi angrily joins the chat.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Does it actually provide any damn value at all at a macro
| level?_
|
| It provides macro value to coinbros and wantrapreneurs who
| think that bragging on social media about fake money is the
| same thing as owning real money. I guess that's something.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Well, my friend in Russia just yesterday donated $10,000 in
| Bitcoin to Ukrainian defense fund. Had he done that using
| paypal, he'd already be in Gulag being raped with a broken
| bottle.
|
| Now he wants to leave Russia, but Russia is being banned from
| the SWIFT network, so he can't get any of his savings out.
| Enter Bitcoin again.
| Finnucane wrote:
| No.
| abi wrote:
| Say you're a Ukrainian fleeing refuge and you want store your
| life's savings somewhere safe. Pretty damn useful there. If you
| don't want to deal with the price fluctuations of BTC or ETH,
| buy stablecoins instead.
| pfooti wrote:
| there's also banks.
| rosndo wrote:
| My Ukrainian bank card still works, but yesterday when I
| had to send a friend 40k UAH I had to split it into 8
| transfers.
| loyl wrote:
| nmilo wrote:
| But which bank are you trusting in a time of war? We've
| seen countries have the power to subvert savings accounts,
| e.g. Greece limited bank withdrawls to PS5000/month. Do you
| trust these banks more than a distributed ledger? This is a
| question that needs real thought and evaluation, and crypto
| _might_ be a useful option. Diversification is important.
| esosac wrote:
| i don't know about ukraine, but i live in venezuela and i
| can't do an international wire transfer here. so some
| people can't rely on banks, but i probably can rely on
| someone around here wanting to take my cash or car or house
| and give me bitcoin if i needed to go away. i use
| localbitcoins a lot of buy local currency in exchange for
| bitcoin... and i'm not a "crypto person", but it happened
| to be super useful for me here in that way
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Right so other crypto is just as good if not better for this?
| rosndo wrote:
| Yes.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Say you're a Ukrainian fleeing refuge and you want store
| your life's savings somewhere safe.
|
| Doesn't make sense. Why would anyone wire your bank account
| money to a crypto exchange, convert it to crypto, transfer
| the crypto to a different bank in another country, then
| withdraw it when they could just wire the money directly to
| the other country's bank?
|
| If you can't wire money out of your bank account to somewhere
| else, you probably can't exchange it for crypto either.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| The only real use case that people keep mentioning is
| transferring large-ish amounts of money (>1000 USD)
| internationally.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Which is not hard if you have a bank account that is in any
| tier above poor person consumer level.
| rabuse wrote:
| Unless you're Russian now
| janandonly wrote:
| Unfortunately no details were given about what makes 50% of all
| bitcoin transactions "fraudulent" ?
|
| What does that even mean?
|
| * did someone try to send something other then bitcoin to a [?]
| address?
|
| * did a client claim he payed and did the payment seem to fail on
| his end?
|
| * did a client not realise that you as payee also pay for the
| network fee?
|
| Nowadays these kind of problems would be easily prevented by
| using bitcoin lightning payments, because they work in a fraction
| of a second and specify the exact amount that has to be payed.
| Also they are almost free of transaction costs.
| jpollock wrote:
| There is substantial exchange rate risk.
|
| If Valve didn't want to see any forex risk on the sale, they
| end up incurring it on refund. If people are using it as an
| easy way to store money in USD and then convert back to BTC
| when the rate goes up, that can get expensive in a hurry.
|
| It could also be that they used Coinbase or some other provider
| to act as a processor, and Coinbase charged the merchant if
| there were chargebacks on Coinbase's accounts.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >If people are using it as an easy way to store money in USD
| and then convert back to BTC when the rate goes up, that can
| get expensive in a hurry.
|
| Why would anyone do this? In what universe is buying games
| and then requesting refunds easier than clicking buy/sell on
| coinbase/kraken/etc.
| j-bos wrote:
| Reminds me of the old gamestop greentext
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Did steam charge a transaction fee for refunds? If not,
| there's your answer.
| isodev wrote:
| By law refunds are free within the first 14 days of a
| purchase in the EU. That's plenty of opportunity to
| "speculate" with coin prices.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Iirc, Steam refunded money in your local fiat, and used a
| third party processor. There was a small forex risk on the
| sale (when the btc transfer started vs when it was sold), but
| that should even put in the long term and they're selling now
| bits so they have the ability to absorb the cost.
| paulgb wrote:
| I remember a period somewhere in the 2010s where it wasn't
| uncommon to see a business experiment with accepting Bitcoin
| (as Steam did), before transaction fees made it impractical.
|
| Given the way people talk about LN, and the (quite
| understandable!) desire to avoid credit card transaction fees,
| why don't we see more businesses accepting it?
|
| (Asking this in good faith; I am admittedly ignorant about LN
| and have not tried making a transaction with it.)
| 3np wrote:
| I think it's just a matter of businesses perceiving the
| potential revenue increase not worth the overhead, combined
| with the resulting slow growth and development of ecosystem
| of service providers.
|
| Running an independent node does take some management above
| that of a normal bitcoin node and merchant tooling and open
| source integrations are still coming together (though there
| are some good and dependable options). A merchant will need
| to keep an eye on their incoming liquidity, or use a service
| provider that does.
|
| That being said, once you're actually using it it's a great
| experience, and for the individual enthusiast running a node
| can be great fun.
|
| One service provider is Bitrefill, where you can buy Steam
| credits (and much else) over Lightning with a throwaway email
| faster than it takes for me to dig and type out a credit card
| out of my wallet or go through the SMS2FA BS of whatever
| virtual credit card-supporting bank I can find in the country
| I happen to be living in. Just copy and paste an invoice or
| scan a QR, depending on your wallet interface.
|
| I do hope we see Lightning support in Coinbase Commerce et al
| soon. Unfortunately BitPay, one of the oldest and I think the
| most widely used payment service provider for Bitcoin, has
| become pretty much unusable as of lately and even if they did
| add lightning support it wouldn't be interesting.
| londons_explore wrote:
| There are just too few users on the LN. Of the whole world
| population, there is probably fewer than 1 in a million who
| could just scan a qr code and make a lightning payment.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I'm not the best person to answer, but lacking better ones,
| here's what I know:
|
| * LN is technically complex, and hard for a normal person to
| run.
|
| * LN requires making an on-chain transaction to open a
| channel. It's still vulnerable to high BTC fees and limited
| by the chain's low capacity.
|
| * LN still runs on top of BTC, and has all the economic
| characteristics BTC has. So if it's stupid to buy pizza for
| $10K BTC because it appreciates, or stupid to sell a game for
| 0.0012 BTC because the price might fall tomorrow, then LN
| changes nothing about that and in some cases makes it worse.
| LN allows a non-cooperative party to delay things, which
| could be used maliciously during price swings.
|
| * It's all still happening inside the crypto ecosystem, which
| is unpleasant to deal with. Think of say how people tried to
| buy their Tesla in BTC, then asked for their money back when
| the price rose. Why would a merchant want to deal with that
| kind of thing?
|
| LN to me is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig -- it still
| leaves many significant problems in place, and adds some new
| ones on top in exchange for the benefits it provides.
| onelastjob wrote:
| LN is too complicated imo. You can just use other chains if
| you want fast and cheap txs. Solana, Nano, Near, any of
| those.
| lawn wrote:
| Simply because LN isn't practical:
|
| - You still need to open (and close) a channel, paying BTC
| fees.
|
| - To accept a payment, you need to first lock up balance.
|
| - You need to always be online, otherwise your channel is
| closed.
|
| - Sometimes your payment can fail, if you cannot find a
| route. This risk increases with the payment amount.
|
| - Sometimes, you cannot even find a payment route, so you
| need to open another channel.
|
| - Sometimes, the other person on the other side of your
| channel might close your channel.
|
| - Despite all this, payments might still have a relatively
| expensive fee (in addition to the BTC fees).
|
| People are trying to create solutions for these problems, but
| they're often either quite complex, introduce third-party
| dependency or both.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| yeah, a couple of companies in the space are experimenting
| with the concept of an omni-pool.
|
| Essentially, since arbitrage bots are a constant you don't
| need an outside oracle to ensure there's very little slippage
| between assets. Addititionnally, since you are swapping
| inside the pool it does not incur a trade fee as you aren't
| trading some outside entity with a confirmation time.
|
| Obviously it gets deep in math, but what you get it the
| ability to pay for anything with anything with no trading
| fees and a % APR for keeping your assets in the omni pool.
|
| Solona and dot already beat visa in transaction speed,
| latency and confirmation time. DOT at technology maturity is
| looking to be able to process around 10X the transaction
| volumes of visa.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Oh cool so a centralized payment system except stupid
| complicated. Sounds like another winning crypto invention
| to me.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Not sure about the others but Solana is not centralized.
| rglullis wrote:
| How much does it cost to run a node?
|
| Strictu sensu, it is "decentralized". In practice, it has
| all the disadvantages of blockchains and none of the
| advantages of the traditional banking networks.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| it's profitable.
| rglullis wrote:
| Owning a bank also is. Your point?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| I can't open a bank, but i can run a node.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Low Trade Fees, cross-colatorilization, instantanious and
| algorithmic liquidation.
|
| imagine i wanted to buy Tesla. I have no money but i do
| have GM Stock. This allows mee to trade GM directly for
| Tesla stock with no actual trade fee, because the trade
| never occurs until i pull all my money out out of the
| pool.
|
| So i am exposed to the asset without having to do the
| centralized exchange way of selling the asset (Incurring
| trade fee) buying usd. selling USD for the next asset
| (Incurring a trade fee) then eventually selling it back
| to USD when i want to utilize that asset.(Incurring a
| trade fee).
|
| So, like i explained before it is a much more efficient
| mechanism of trading any asset. Since trading is
| literally the bedrock of civilization and effective
| capital allocation through trading is what drives
| prosperity, creating a more efficient trading algorithmn
| in crypto is one of the finest achievement of our
| generation even though most haven't undeerstood it's
| significance yet.
|
| The soverign individual was a good book for me to
| recognize the need for crypto in the world.
| [deleted]
| skybrian wrote:
| Could people create fake game items and use Bitcoin to pay
| themselves as a way of converting it to cash? Is that a thing?
|
| So the game item and the transaction are fake, as in they're
| not actually there to play games.
| trillic wrote:
| Yes, this is colloquially known as "money laundering". It's
| one of Bitcoin's most promising use-cases!
| skybrian wrote:
| I know, I'm asking how feasible it is with Steam.
| bena wrote:
| The game and item are real. Hell, they may be legit
| games. The transactions are real. Everything is real.
|
| But the source of the money used to buy the games is
| illegitimate.
|
| Let's say, I stole $100,000. Now, I can't use this money
| until I find a way to explain how I have it.
|
| If I wanted to wash it with Steam, I could go to the
| store, buy Steam cards or gift cards with the cash. Set
| up several Steam accounts, then use those cards to buy my
| game.
|
| Now I'll lose some money to taxes, Steam's cut, and
| paying people to buy cards and games, but now I have
| $50,000 dollars I can use and no one is going to question
| where I got it.
|
| You may be wondering why I can use the money to buy gift
| cards but not just deposit it in my bank, but no one is
| asking why someone has $100. That money is not traceable
| to anyone.
| Duralias wrote:
| It isn't as widespread as it probably would be with crypto
| (start selling shit game, buy game with crypto, get fiat),
| but Steam already has problems with people doing this, it is
| usually just more creative as it is hard to buy stuff with
| stolen credit cards, but we know from a ton of news that it
| is very common on grey market selling sites.
| bena wrote:
| > Unfortunately no details were given about what makes 50% of
| all bitcoin transactions "fraudulent" ?
|
| And? They don't report to you. So they don't have to explain
| anything to you. They don't have to defend their decisions to
| you.
| mmaunder wrote:
| "did someone try to send something other then bitcoin to a [?]
| address?"
|
| Like what? Cottage cheese?
|
| Transaction failures and and fees are not fraud. The quote is
| specific.
|
| Regarding lightning:
| https://twitter.com/nikzh/status/1356335970300416001?s=20&t=...
| Tenoke wrote:
| >"did someone try to send something other then bitcoin to a
| [?] address?" Like what? Cottage cheese?
|
| Most commonly btc via lightning network to a place that
| doesn't support it or bch. It happens all the time.
| 3np wrote:
| > Most commonly btc via lightning network to a place that
| doesn't support it
|
| That makes no sense - how would that happen in practice?
|
| BCH, though, yeah. Though less so over time since newer
| address types aren't compatible.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| There was no lighting network in 2016
| SilasX wrote:
| Sorry, I went to the article and it wasn't any more specific
| on what a fraudulent transaction means in this context, and I
| don't know what that would mean here (for the context of a
| purchase via Bitcoin on a user's Steam account).
|
| All I can imagine is a case where the user claims they didn't
| make the purchase, "please refund", but that would be easy to
| disprove.
| giaour wrote:
| I assumed they meant spending stolen bitcoin on steam. It's
| common to call purchases made with a stolen credit card
| "fraudulent," even if there's nothing untoward about the
| purchase itself other than the payment instrument.
| toast0 wrote:
| > even if there's nothing untoward about the purchase
| itself other than the payment instrument.
|
| When you make a purchase with a credit card, you claim
| that you are an authorized user of the card, and that you
| will pay the bill in accordance with the account
| agreement.
|
| If that's not true, it's fraud. You've knowingly made an
| untrue claim in order to receive something of value.
| giaour wrote:
| From the other comments on this thread, it seems like
| Steam was using a zero-confirmation payment validator of
| some kind. That makes bitcoin payments Steam accepted
| effectively a form of check, and if customers exploited
| this to double-spend bitcoin, then they paid steam with a
| hot check. Hence, fraud.
|
| Should Steam used a different form of validation? Yeah,
| that would have let them reject some (most? all?) of
| these fraudulent transactions. But anyone exploiting that
| situation to double-spend coins was committing fraud just
| as much as if they had written a worthless check, used a
| stolen credit card, or tried to pass off a counterfeit
| $100 bill.
| SilasX wrote:
| I thought it was always really big news whenever someone
| even attempted a double spend, regardless of success? So
| if that's what he meant, we should have been seeing those
| cases in the news back then.
|
| Edit: I guess not?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30480133
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| That dude is an absolute idiot.
| isodev wrote:
| Fraudulent also includes tricking people into purchasing
| without understanding what they are buying or how much it would
| cost.
|
| In the case of crypto, there is no actual bank or payment
| provider through which to make a claim or facilitate a
| reimbursement.
|
| In the case of the EU, the law imposes guaranteed minimal
| protection for online purchases. For example, any online
| purchase is fully reversible (including network fees) within
| the first 14 days following the transaction.
|
| I don't think there are reasonable ways to meet this level of
| consumer service with crypto.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Steam marked me as a "fraud" because I used my European Revolut
| card to try and make a purchase when I lived in Indonesia.
|
| I get that they don't want European people to pay Indonesian
| prices through a VPN or whatnot, but I was living in Indonesia
| and living off a local salary; I thought marking me as a
| "fraud" was rather harsh; with the increased ease of
| international banking there are loads of cases where this is
| perfectly legit (Spotify also doesn't allow it, but is far less
| harsh in how they communicate it - Netflix posed no problems;
| it's also circumventable by using gift cards, which is how I
| used Spotify, but I never tried this for Steam).
|
| Anyway, I'd wager a significant chunk of the "fraud" cases is
| stuff like this: circumvention of regional pricing.
| mindslight wrote:
| I think you figured it out. In general "fraud" gets used as
| an abstraction-primacy obfuscation term just like the more
| extreme "identity theft". The claim is obviously not akin to
| credit card fraud, and Valve doesn't describe the mechanics
| of what they're calling "fraud". So it's likely the one of
| the least offensive possibilities - like routing around their
| regional price discrimination. Which would make perfect sense
| as there's no identifying metadata tying a payment source to
| a location in the way that say a credit card does. Of course
| from the customer's perspective this is simply making the
| market more efficient, and I'll make sure to play my tiniest
| violin.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I used to work for a company that does this sort of fraud
| detection. Using a credit card from a rich country in a
| developing country for an online transaction screams stolen
| credit card number. Fraudsters often use services like Steam
| where you can buy something fairly cheap to test the card
| number, then they go to the effort of trying a bigger
| transaction.
| andai wrote:
| I'm on vacation in Croatia and my Spotify Premium expired. I
| tried to renew it with my Dutch card and was rejected, so I
| had to use a VPN set to Amsterdam...
| robocat wrote:
| Are they getting stricter? I've never had that problem,
| including when travelling to all ex-yugoslavia countries
| some years ago. I'm a New Zealander.
|
| Reminder to self: organise VPN before leaving for overseas.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| There's loads of services that are very anal about it. I
| also couldn't order a charger for my ThinkPad when I
| lived in New Zealand because the Lenovo website didn't
| accept my euro card, even though the shipping address was
| _to New Zealand_. I contacted support: nothing they could
| do. Had to use a friend 's Kiwi account.
|
| Stuff like this is why I just started keeping the
| accounts around as I move about instead of closing them.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I'm visiting Macedonia. I changed the email address on my
| Capital One account (migrating off Gmail) and they froze
| all 4 of my cards. To unfreeze them, I had to provide my
| drivers license, social security card, and proof of
| residence in the USA & then wait two weeks. There was no
| process for accelerating the timetable.
|
| #expatlife
| mbreese wrote:
| Did you notify Capital One you were in Macedonia at the
| time? Every time I've been abroad, I had to notify any
| card issuers first, just to make sure the charges weren't
| flagged.
|
| Otherwise, this level of fraud detection and response
| should be considered normal (and good).
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I did not notify them, but they can clearly see I've been
| using the cards for the last two months. And I've called
| my card companies in the past to notify them of upcoming
| travel, and they all told me it was unnecessary with the
| new chips. If I had changed my email using my laptop &
| VPN connection to the USA, maybe I wouldn't have had a
| problem, but I used the mobile app.
|
| I didn't mind the cards getting frozen. It could have
| been fraud for all they knew. What I did not appreciate
| was the fact that it took two weeks & multiple calls to
| my credit union to resolve proof of address. I was lucky
| that I had my social security and with me, and that I had
| a backup credit card from a different bank, otherwise
| it's don't k is what I would have done.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Is that #expatlife or #donotusegmail ?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Capital One froze the cards. I don't think gmail has the
| ability to freeze someone's cards. Has nothing to do with
| gmail at all, just the change of email address in Capital
| One.
| erk__ wrote:
| Likely using stolen credit card credentials to buy bitcoin and
| then use them to buy things on Steam. They already have a
| massive problem with that without introducing bitcoin into the
| equation
| flotzam wrote:
| Wut. This is like stealing faberge eggs so that you can throw
| them through the window of a Shake Shack that you want to
| break into
| dahfizz wrote:
| Have you ever heard the phrase "money laundering"?
| flotzam wrote:
| Yes, and it's almost always used as a vague catch-all
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| There are some resources out there if you search for the
| stages of money laundering. Companies that have to fight
| money laundering have to know what it looks like and what
| they can do to catch it.
|
| The stages are Placement, Layering, and Integration.
|
| Here's one source that may help explain:
|
| https://www.stpaulschambers.com/stages-of-money-
| laundering-e...
| flotzam wrote:
| But how does any of that apply to the supposed "Steam
| purchases with stolen credit cards by way of Bitcoin"
| scheme?
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| 1. Stolen money is used to buy bitcoin
|
| 2. Bitcoin is obfuscated by purchasing things online with
| it
|
| 3. Those online assets can be sold for cash
| rosndo wrote:
| candiddevmike wrote:
| 1. Make a bunch of illegitimate money
|
| 2. Release some shitty game on steam that no one will
| play
|
| 3. Buy millions of copies of said shitty game with your
| illegitimate money using Bitcoin
|
| 4. Your illegitimate money is now revenue from your
| shitty game and can be taxed (Profit)
| flotzam wrote:
| The obfuscation in step 2 seems very superficial. Like,
| is the IRS not going to ask where you got your stacks of
| Steam codes from?
| rosndo wrote:
| Your bank will probably be the first one to ask, lying is
| a felony. (As is money laundering, of course)
|
| Also Valve will be looking for this too, as required by
| their bank.
|
| This is an incredibly unrealistic money laundering
| scheme, entirely fabricated by mr_cyborg.
|
| The truth is that the "fraudulent transactions" here are
| double-spends, because Steam was accepting 0-conf
| payments in an unsafe way.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > This is an incredibly unrealistic money laundering
| scheme, entirely fabricated by mr_cyborg.
|
| Using stolen money to buy gift cards, using those gift
| cards to buy real things and then selling those real
| objects or licenses or accounts after the fact is a well
| known process. Substituting "bitcoin" or any
| cryptocurrency for "gift card" is neither unreasonable
| nor unrealistic.
| rosndo wrote:
| This only makes sense where "stolen money" is money that
| you don't actually control, such as stolen credit cards
| where the transactions will inevitably be charged back.
| In that case it does make sense to buy and sell gift
| cards in order to "cash out" the money.
|
| This does not make any sense in the context of bitcoin.
| berkes wrote:
| How can you launder money on steam? Buying swords or
| funny hats? Buying hundreds of games and then never play
| any?
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Buy TF2 keys and trade them to another account? Or CSGO
| skins? It's incredibly liquid and there are third party
| marketplaces for cashing out
| netheril96 wrote:
| They are not more liquid than BTC itself. Why not just
| sell the BTC directly?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| I guess games and cosmetics sell easier than crypto
| scams.
| mbesto wrote:
| Speculative theory -
|
| - You steal a credit card.
|
| - Buy BTC with said credit card.
|
| - Use BTC to buy Steam cosmetics that you already own and
| Steam converts that BTC to USD.
|
| You now have effectively used a stolen credit card to
| convert its value to cold hard cash that is not
| traceable, or at least requires several hoops to jump
| through to figure out who stole the card.
| k__ wrote:
| Why would they go over Steam?
|
| If they already have their assets in BTC they could
| simply put them in a mixer.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| that doesn't make any sense. The 'fraud' in your scenario and
| where the point of contention lies is between the the credit
| card company and the exchange where it was onramped. There's
| no way the exchange is then going to go through the effort to
| track the btc to steam and say 'Hey, that transaction that
| didn't come from our exchange wallet was fraud i want the BTC
| back.'
|
| Also - That's just like fraud with extra steps? Why even usee
| btc?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Perhaps stolen credit cards have checks in place to
| immediately flag them as fraudulent?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| yeah - Some. crypto companies have that too now though.
| Most exchanges have haulted the ability to buy crypto
| with credit altogether.
|
| But Crypto.com allows you to buy up to $30 worth of
| crypto with a credit card and cards online are pennies on
| the dollar online if bought in bulk.
|
| An astute con artist would recongnise that the only real
| verifications credit cards have at their disposal is
| geolocation and shopping habits. So if one were to buy CC
| online, create a bot to enter the details onto the
| crypto.com exchange, route the traffic through a VPN
| using the CC address as a base, send the $30 worth of
| crypto you bought off exchange and into a wallet, using
| Tor and some clean Eth you bought in cash to pay the gas
| fees, Wrap the BTC in WBTC, throw it on uniswap, swap for
| some privacy coin, use that privacy coin to send to
| another wallet within that private ecosystem so the
| headers on the node are lost and bam. You've got some
| clean crypto that you've fraudulently bought with a
| credit card but can never be claimed as fraud!
| rosndo wrote:
| No.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Yes.
|
| What do you think a chargeback is?
| rosndo wrote:
| Literally nobody offers a service to check if specific
| coins were bought with a stolen credit card.
|
| I know what a chargeback is, and those are utterly
| irrelevant here.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| That's not what they said at all though. Have you never
| been traveling and had your CC declined and your bank
| immediately calls you to verify the purchase? Credit
| cards do have checks in place to immediately flag them as
| fraudulent. This is not related to bitcoins and they
| never said it was.
|
| On top of that, if you use a stolen credit card to buy a
| steam game and the original owner files a chargeback,
| your entire steam account gets banned. So yes it's
| extremely relevant here.
|
| If instead you buy BTC on an exchange and then spend
| those BTC on steam, it's less likely to be flagged as
| fraud (at the time) because the BTC is purchased from an
| American website. Then you spend the BTC on steam. Then
| once the credit card is reported as stolen and a
| chargeback filed, it's the crypto exchange who gets hit.
| The chargeback is never associated with Steam and you can
| buy Steam games from a lower-priced market without the CC
| company ever being aware.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I literally had to approve with my bank to verify payment
| of a relatively large sum.
|
| My credit card got into a locked state for a while every
| month, when Vulture did a approved monthly charge.
|
| There are plenty of systems that verify things out of the
| ordinary.
|
| It's not because you haven't encountered it, that they
| aren't there.
|
| Additionally, stolen credit cards can be marked as
| stolen. Which would block any future payment with it.
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| You can't really buy bitcoin with a credit card because the
| seller would likely lose a ton of money to chargebacks.
| scotty79 wrote:
| How would steam know what was used to pay for bitcoin they
| received?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Conceivably, the public ledger aspect of the technology.
| gruez wrote:
| I doubt steam is doing blockchain analysis, tracing back
| where the coins came from, and seeing whether the
| exchange that sold them the coins were defrauded or not.
| jayd16 wrote:
| First off, why not? Why would you doubt that when they're
| a massive storefront and deal with fraud of all kinds?
|
| But also, wouldn't it be fairly easy and beneficial to
| have this information? Exchanges know what wallets are
| charged back and fraudulent.
|
| Is it not in their interest to work with Steam?
|
| Or even, is it not in the exchange's interest to do this
| analysis and demand the coin from Steam?
| gruez wrote:
| > First off, why not? Why would you doubt that when
| they're a massive storefront and deal with fraud of all
| kinds?
|
| 1. The anti-fraud tech used for credit card fraud (ie.
| stolen credit cards used for unauthorized transactions)
| don't really translate well to the fraud described here
| (ie. stolen cryptocurrency).
|
| 2. it makes sense for ecommerence merchants to do anti-
| fraud stuff, because they're on the hook for fraud. the
| same does not apply to cryptocurrency transactions.
|
| >But also, wouldn't it be fairly easy and beneficial to
| have this information? Exchanges know what wallets are
| charged back and fraudulent.
|
| 1. I haven't heard of such blacklists being around,
| especially in 2017 (when steam stopped accepting
| payments)
|
| 2. such blacklists would likely be ineffective, because
| of mixers and lack of coordination (see previous point)
|
| 3. such blacklists threaten the fungibility of bitcoin,
| which would probably cause backlash from potential
| customers.
|
| >Is it not in their interest to work with Steam?
|
| 1. it might be in their interest to work with steam, but
| not the other way around
|
| 2. even though steam might have huge sales volume, it's
| not going to be the primary route criminals cash out. if
| you stole tens of thousands of dollars in crypto, I doubt
| you'll spend a significant portion of that on games. You
| only have so much time, and games are relatively cheap.
| Meanwhile localbitcoin has people willing to give you
| literal cash for a few percentage points cut. There's a
| reason why all the anti-money laundering regulations
| target banks and other high cash volume businesses (eg.
| pawn shops), and not bestbuy or mcdonalds.
|
| >Or even, is it not in the exchange's interest to do this
| analysis and demand the coin from Steam?
|
| If [random exchange] messaged me and said that some coins
| I hold were 10% tainted from 10 transactions ago, and
| wanted me to return them, I'd tell them to fuck off.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >blacklists
|
| They wouldn't be blacklists. You only learn after the
| fact so its more about the analytics.
|
| >I'd tell them to fuck off.
|
| Well that's nice but if you get paid with stolen money,
| you don't just get to keep the money and tell them to
| fuck off. Steam would be liable to return the funds.
| gruez wrote:
| >They wouldn't be blacklists. You only learn after the
| fact so its more about the analytics.
|
| I mean, that goes back to my original question, why would
| they do this? Does bestbuy run analytics on the cash they
| receive to see how much % of their cash purchases were
| "fraudulent"?
|
| >Well that's nice but if you get paid with stolen money,
| you don't just get to keep the money and tell them to
| fuck off. Steam would be liable to return the funds.
|
| IANAL, but I thought this only applied to stolen goods,
| not cash? I heard of authorities seizing cash when they
| raid a drug house, but not randomly seizing people's cash
| because they happened to carry a bill that was involved
| in a bank robbery.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > Does bestbuy run analytics on the cash they receive to
| see how much % of their cash purchases were "fraudulent"?
|
| Credit card companies do, yes.
| gruez wrote:
| Again, that's because credit card companies and/or
| merchants eat the cost of fraud. That's not the case with
| cash. The FBI isn't going to be raiding bestbuy's stores
| looking for stolen bills.
| jayd16 wrote:
| In this case, it's still private self interest in the
| exact same way. If a stolen credit card is used to buy
| Bitcoin, then Bitcoin is used in Steam, who eats the
| fraud and why would they not push against the others for
| restitution if it's all trackable?
| gruez wrote:
| > If a stolen credit card is used to buy Bitcoin, then
| Bitcoin is used in Steam, who eats the fraud
|
| The credit card company and/or cryptocurrency exchange
| would eat the fraud.
|
| >and why would they not push against the others for
| restitution if it's all trackable?
|
| This is moving the goalposts. We're not discussing
| whether such a scheme would benefit banks/credit card
| companies/crypto exchanges, we're discussing whether
| valve implemented such a scheme for steam. I'm sure the
| aforementioned parties appreciate such a scheme, just as
| banks would appreciate a scheme where stores were
| checking the bills they accept were stolen or not.
| However, that says nothing about whether such a scheme
| exists, or whether steam was voluntarily doing so with no
| apparent benefit to itself. Nor does it change the fact
| that such a push was non-existent (or at least non-
| visible) in 2017.
| rhino369 wrote:
| How would Steam even learn about that? The person getting
| scammed in that situation is the person selling bitcoins for
| credit card payments, since those payments will be canceled
| by the card holders bank.
|
| Does anyone actually sell bitcoin via credit card
| transactions?
| lucb1e wrote:
| > * did someone try to send something other then bitcoin to a
| [?] address?
|
| That would not even register right? Different coins are
| completely separate and it wouldn't even have registered
| anywhere and show up in the statistic. As far as I know the
| addresses are also distinct between coins (so it's not even
| physically possible) but there are so many now and I've been
| out of that world for a few years now so that might have
| changed.
|
| > * did a client claim he payed and did the payment seem to
| fail on his end?
|
| You mean like opening a support case, claiming they have paid?
|
| > * did a client not realise that you as payee also pay for the
| network fee?
|
| That sounds possible. In this case, Steam's bitcoin client
| would indeed detect the transaction but it would never be mined
| and thus never really spent.
|
| My first thought was a double spend, though, or perhaps that
| the source money was illegitimately obtained (e.g. later
| determined to be laundered money or so).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If it was double spend, I imagine we would have heard the
| news.
|
| It's probably illegitimate money.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Why? Double spends are not hard to do from a technical
| point of view.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Bitcoin's protocol doesn't prevent a double-spend for a
| 'short' amount of time after payment, it just guarantees
| that, eventually*, exactly one of those spends would be
| seen and counted as valid by all compliant nodes (as long
| as at least 51% of the network is compliant nodes).
|
| But nothing prevents a minority attacker from branching the
| chain with their own alternate history at any point,
| although if they did it to a 'historical' block - one deep
| behind in the chain - then they're doomed from the start,
| they could never build an alternate chain longer with the
| main network racing them. Their only hope is waiting for a
| spend to become in a valid block then immediately start
| another branch with a double spend, hoping they could
| convince enough of the network to accept their version of
| the blockchain where the second double spend is actually
| the legit one. This gets harder and harder the more blocks
| build on the main branch, if 5 or 6 blocks build on a
| block, it's pretty much impossible for all intents and
| purposes to invalidate that block. (Unless, again, the
| attacker cares enough to secure computing firepower greater
| than or equal to 51% of the overall network)
|
| *: "Eventually" is a probalistic statment, theoritically an
| alien super computer with unimaginable power could rewrite
| the whole blockchain from 2009 till now in the time it
| takes one of ours to boot, the blockchain protocol
| constantly adjusts a parameter that makes mining a valid
| block always takes, on average, 10 minutes. Assuming no
| sudden computing advances, this will always compensates for
| increases in gradual computing power such that you always
| need the majority's support for dictating what's the
| longest branch.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Sending the wrong type of coins btc vs bch will result in you
| losing those coins. That's not fraud..
| tiahura wrote:
| And of the 50% that were legit, what percentage was with stolen
| or fraudulently obtained bitcoins?
| kova12 wrote:
| What exactly does it mean "fraudulent transaction" in the context
| of bitcoin? It's not like you can use someone else's account
| number to purchase stuff.
| Duralias wrote:
| Money laundering I'd imagine.
|
| Criminal creates shit game, buys game using crypto and gets
| paid out in fiat because *very* few developers would accept
| being paid in crypto.
| rosndo wrote:
| This does precisely nothing to "clean" the money as it
| doesn't eliminate the direct link between you and the dirty
| bitcoins.
| Duralias wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but does, for example, ransomware
| payments in, for example, bitcoin make the bitcoin "dirty"?
|
| The only context I have heard "dirty" coins in is if they
| have been stolen from a crypto platform, or I think stolen
| by a influential crypto bro.
| rosndo wrote:
| > Forgive my ignorance, but does, for example, ransomware
| payments in, for example, bitcoin make the bitcoin
| "dirty"?
|
| Yep, also links to darknet markets and any other "bad
| actors" whose addresses are known.
| swid wrote:
| The people who buy the game then resell the key on other
| websites for less than you find it on steam. They can buy many
| licenses when the game is on sale, so even if there is no
| chargeback, the devs can lose money through these methods.
| Otherwise it is still a money laundering tactic.
|
| Here's a blog post where they talk about this eco system.
|
| https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-303
| flotzam wrote:
| OK that kind of makes sense: "fraud" = making geographical or
| time-limited price discrimination less effective
| kova12 wrote:
| I'm failing to understand why is this considered fraudulent.
| Buy low sell high, this is how all trade works. People buying
| multiple keys for resale is just an unintended consequence of
| underpricing the product.
| swid wrote:
| If the purpose is to avoid KYC laws and turn bitcoin to
| cash, it isn't hard to understand why Steam wants to avoid
| these types of customers.
|
| Also, they aren't buying low and selling high, they are
| buying low and selling even lower because they are okay
| with a lossy conversion.
| chii wrote:
| i suspect that steam was using a payment processor which
| identified that the coins were on a blacklist of sorts, and was
| not legitimately acquired (e.g., either stolen, or purchased
| with stolen money etc).
| hashimotonomora wrote:
| How does Walmart compare to that regarding purchases with
| ill-gotten cash?
| subash_8848 wrote:
| Thankfully there is no distributed ledger keeping track of
| every little thing so we don't have to worry about that.
| anonymousab wrote:
| If cash could tell you whether it was illegally acquired
| then I'm sure many businesses would refuse to accept
| illegal cash.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Because cash can't be easily identified as stolen, so the
| problem does not exist.
|
| Just like the electricity cost of bank transaction cannot
| be easily quantified, so the problem does not exist.
|
| Those problems only exist in Bitcoin. /s
| bena wrote:
| No one says that the electricity cost of a bank
| transaction can't be quantified. They say it's far
| cheaper than bitcoin.
|
| Because it is.
|
| Bitcoin by its very nature wants to expand to consume
| every possible unit of energy it can.
| ajross wrote:
| Walmart (like all large retailers) spends a ton of effort
| trying to address e.g. laundering efforts with gift cards,
| actually. Google around for all the press releases about
| how they partner with the FBI, etc... They absolutely
| recognize that they're part of the laundering chain (and
| that this makes them liable to punishments under AML
| statutes, of course).
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Walmart (like all large retailers) spends a ton of
| effort trying to address e.g. laundering efforts with
| gift cards, actually_
|
| For example, you can't buy a gift card in an Apple Store
| without signing a statement promising that you're not
| buying the gift card because a stranger online told you
| to.
|
| Sounds ineffective on the surface, especially to jaded
| tech-types, but it's enough to give real people in the
| process of being scammed an opportunity to think about
| what they're doing.
| georgyo wrote:
| Cash is completely fungible because there is no clear trace
| of money from one person to the next.
|
| If someone steals 100k of cash, there is a very low
| probability that the serial number of those bills were
| recorded somewhere. And even if they were, you couldn't
| easily trace the money though complex systems.
|
| Bitcoin on the other hand is a complete and open ledger.
| When these large heists that constantly happen, it is
| trivial to identify the transactions that happen
| afterwards.
|
| Cash is actually anonymous and Bitcoin is only pseudo-
| anonymous.
| iszomer wrote:
| Which iirc was the basis for "cleanly mined" btc with
| little to no transaction history on-chain and
| tumbler/mixer services that attempted to obfuscate it.
| hashimotonomora wrote:
| The fact that it's difficult or expensive to track does
| not mean it cannot be. Technically it's possible to force
| every cash handling business to scan (just like you scan
| an UPC) each bill.
| bena wrote:
| "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and
| private."
|
| If I buy you lunch today, you can pay me back next week.
| We're not "cash handling business[es]", so we wouldn't
| have to scan.
|
| Second, I don't think it's technically possible. For
| companies that do business across state lines, sure, but
| within a state's border, interstate commerce laws don't
| apply. Each state would have to enact a similar law. And
| best of luck with that.
| duxup wrote:
| > There's a difference between what it should be and what it
| really is currently in the real world.
|
| I feel like that when I speak with bitcoin enthusiasts. Lots of
| ideology that I don't necessarily disagree with... but the
| ecosystem is something else...
| ta988 wrote:
| That's the thing if you talk to people from any political party
| or ideology, there are some really general ideas that may not
| be shocking. What matters is the reality of the actions of
| those people and those they believe in.
| vmception wrote:
| The enthusiasts are excited and altering the network towards
| what it should be, even if that's simply use and being an
| addition to the collective conscious
|
| Many saw something that wasn't done and go contribute
|
| Others saw something as static
|
| Others saw something as stagnant and went to contribute to
| another network that experiences the same path towards its
| ideals
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| i can pay for anything in the economy right now with BTC. It's
| called a crypto debit card... look it up.
|
| I don't understand this sentiment. A) 50% of btc transaction were
| fraudulent makes zero sense. The technology behind BTC ensures it
| can't be fraudulent. So unless someone wants to explain to me how
| the hackers broke BTC's consensus to buy... videogames? it makes
| noe sense.
| nest0r wrote:
| reaperducer wrote:
| _i can pay for anything in the economy right now with BTC. It
| 's called a crypto debit card... look it up._
|
| Not every organization accepts debit cards. Look it up.
| [deleted]
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| I don't think i've ever run into one here in the US that
| didn't let me use my crypto card.
|
| I don't even remember the last time i carried cash?
| reaperducer wrote:
| I'm in the U.S., too. You must not go very many interesting
| places, or find yourself in very many interesting
| situations.
|
| I guess maybe a crypto debit card is good for people who
| lead plain lives. Like hanging around town and going to the
| movies and the candy store. But I require both cash and a
| real credit card for my life. Debit cards have failed me
| too often.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Okay - but now we are really picking at semantics here,
| aren't we? If i changed my answer to everywhere who
| accepts a debit card can accept crypto, does it really
| change the sentiment of what i'm trying to convey?
|
| Because at that point i can go on a tangent and say well,
| the USD is actually accepted at less places than BTC
| because i can use my debit card in mexico but you can't
| use USD.
| devit wrote:
| How can a Bitcoin transaction be fraudulent?
|
| They are irreversible and if the Bitcoin is stolen that's not the
| merchant's problem.
|
| The whole point of Bitcoin is to eliminate the possibility of
| chargebacks and thus the need for merchant to care about whether
| the buyer is in good faith and whether the money is stolen.
| giaour wrote:
| > They are irreversible and if the Bitcoin is stolen that's not
| the merchant's problem.
|
| This seems consistent with the bitcoin ethos but incompatible
| how the economy and legal system work. If someone buys a
| physical item from your physical store with a hot check, a
| stolen credit card, or marked bills that were just stolen from
| a bank, you don't get to keep the money, even if police aren't
| able to recover the item you sold. This is normally referred to
| as being defrauded.
| olalonde wrote:
| I do believe that you get to keep cash. I don't think I've
| ever heard of an instance of "dirty cash" getting seized back
| from a merchant. Do you have an example of that?
| EamonnMR wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Uni
| t...
| giaour wrote:
| No, but I don't really have an example of a specific credit
| card chargeback, either. At least in the US, the police can
| seize the cash as evidence, and their duty is to return it
| to the rightful owner, not whoever happened to have it at
| the time of seizure.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Just because a computer says it's ok doesn't mean you can just
| start dealing in stolen goods.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| > The whole point of Bitcoin is to eliminate the possibility of
| chargebacks
|
| This is obviously false. There is absolutely nothing that
| compels normal payments companies to honor chargebacks. Since
| you don't need Bitcoin to complete this goal, this goal cannot
| be Bitcoins purpose.
|
| The reason that they do it is because being consumer friendly
| is more important than being merchant friendly. Even merchants
| would attest to this fact
| mdoms wrote:
| > if the Bitcoin is stolen that's not the merchant's problem
|
| It is if half the transactions at the merchant eventually get
| refunded.
|
| > The whole point of Bitcoin is to eliminate the possibility of
| chargeback
|
| I'm sorry I'm having trouble keeping up with the "the point" of
| Bitcoin is this week. So it's chargeback avoidance now?
| lokar wrote:
| There seems to be a basic misunderstanding on the part of the
| pro-btc ppl here all saying "how is that fraud?" or "how is that
| steams problem?"
|
| If you run a business that can be used in a money laundering
| scheme, even if you are not a victim, you have a legal
| responsibility to try to limit/prevent that actually.
|
| The crypto crowd may not like that, but it's not up to them.
| rosndo wrote:
| The basic misunderstanding is on your part.
|
| "Money laundering" wasn't mentioned by anyone but you. Stop
| inventing things.
|
| This is about valve getting fucked because they were accepting
| bitcoin payments with zero confirmations.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| Why take it personally? They brought up an important issue.
| rosndo wrote:
| I'm not taking anything personally, just calling him out on
| his strawman.
| lokar wrote:
| Did you even read the other threads? It comes up almost every
| time.
| rosndo wrote:
| So what? That's completely unfounded speculation by those
| commenters supported neither by the article nor the actual
| facts.
| m348e912 wrote:
| I'd like to know what Gabe meant by fraudulent too. The whole
| idea of crypto is that if you send it and it's confirmed you
| can't get it back, which makes fraud (on the payers side)
| nearly impossible.
|
| You brought up the point about zero confirmations. Zero-conf
| itself is fairly reliable, it certainly doesn't account for
| 50% transactions being fraudulent. Bitcoin introduced replace
| by fee in 2016. In 2017, bitcoin transition fees were high,
| and there was large increase in the bitcoin mempool, which
| led to a backlog of stuck low-fee transactions.
|
| Replace by fee adds a major loophole to zeroconf, low-fee,
| stuck transactions could be rebroadcast with a higher fee and
| sent somewhere else even after they were "received" but not
| yet "confirmed" by Steam. Users could sign up, pay with
| Bitcoin, steam sees the payment but doesn't want the user to
| wait 3 days for confirmation, so steam completes the signup.
| After that the user rebroadcasts the transaction back to
| themselves with a higher fee and quicker confirmation. The
| original transaction doesn't go through.
|
| Here's and discussion on how reliable zero-conf is when RBF
| is not part of the protocol and instead bigger blocks are
| mined.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIt96gFh4vw
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Couldn't steam use longevity to decide whether to accept
| crypto transactions and cancel entire accounts for
| fraudulent activity?
|
| Don't let bob create a new account with zero games and
| double spend his way to a free game because he has nothing
| to lose.
|
| If Sam who has 100 games in his account with 10 year
| longevity cheats you insist he make good on his transaction
| or ban his account and don't ever let him create a new one
| with the same name and billing address. Sam is highly
| unlikely to value playing a singular game more than his
| account.
|
| This seems absolutely trivial to avoid problems with.
| rosndo wrote:
| I know this is about zero confirmation transactions because
| I know people who were deliberately double spending on
| Steam.
|
| > Zero-conf itself is fairly reliable, it certainly doesn't
| account for 50% transactions being fraudulent
|
| Of course it does. Someone using this to spend the same
| bitcoin multiple times will generate many times more
| transactions than a regular user.
| m348e912 wrote:
| You're right and I take it back. If Bitcoin didn't have
| replace-by-fee, then maybe it would have been a more
| accurate statement.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > The whole idea of crypto is that if you send it and it's
| confirmed you can't get it back, which makes fraud (on the
| payers side) nearly impossible.
|
| I consider "obtained somebody's credentials or private key
| through illegal means and then used that to purchase a good
| with stolen BTC" to be fraud. That the network considers
| this to be a normal transaction is not relevant.
| leereeves wrote:
| I wonder, is there any legal precedent for that? Analogy
| with other transactions could support either
| interpretation. (Spending stolen cash is not fraud, but
| using a stolen credit card is.)
| httpsterio wrote:
| I think assuming money laundering was a fair assumption as
| the article only describes fraudulent activity and nothing
| else on the matter.
| rosndo wrote:
| It's really not, the idea of laundering cryptocurrency
| through Steam is ludicrous.
|
| It works the other way around, people launder funds _from_
| steam into cryptocurrency. Either by buying items with
| stolen credit cards or by stealing steam accounts.
| leppr wrote:
| I don't see how that's ludicrous. There's a lot of dirty
| money on both sides. One could easily imagine a scheme
| where items or accounts loaded with games bought with
| dirty BTC are sold for now cleaner fiat or crypto.
| rosndo wrote:
| This is the worst way imaginable to cash out dirty
| bitcoins. You can clean your cryptocurrency without
| paying Valve outrageous amounts for _dirty_ fiat currency
| that you'll just have to launder again.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| There is absolutely no definition of fraud that I read in the
| article.
| lokar wrote:
| I was referring the the comment threads here
| gjs278 wrote:
| phil21 wrote:
| > The crypto crowd may not like that, but it's not up to them.
|
| I think you'll find many of the "crypto crowd" strongly
| disagree with your assessment.
|
| In fact, reality on the ground highly suggests it is indeed at
| least partly up to them.
|
| This is probably where the fundamental "talking past each
| other" happens on forums like HN.
| Lochleg wrote:
| In my estimation, most of the activity done with people's
| inventory on Steam, especially skins in major games, involve one
| illicit scheme or another. I guess you can't or shouldn't stop
| people from using their skins on gambling sites. However, it
| doesn't seem like many of the metafeatures that the company
| started to build around Steam actually serve regular gamers just
| looking to enjoy themselves.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| This sounds eerily similar to various debates regarding adult
| content, that some companies (clearly not all becuause OnlyFans)
| have decided that customer segment is not worth pursuing. Not
| because there is no money in it, but just because it is not worth
| the trouble...
|
| I am specifically thinking of the drama between payment
| processors and porn sites. I don't really think that Visa's
| position is "porn = bad" or that they would deliberately sever a
| profitable relationship with customers unless they were
| experiencing or anticipating something bad for business.
|
| Valve seems to be thinking in the same vein here, where it is
| just not even worth trying to play the crypto game (pun
| intended...).
| DangitBobby wrote:
| This article I think contains the original interview with Gabe.
| It at least mentions the nature of the fraud [1]. He actually
| says "the vast majority" which sounds like more than 50% to me.
|
| > Another thing was that the vast majority of those transactions,
| for whatever reason, were fraudulent, where people were
| repudiating transactions or using illegal sources of funds and
| things like that. And that's just out of control, right? You want
| that number, realistically, in a couple of percent, not half of
| all transactions turning out to be fraudulent transactions.
| Similarly, with the actors that are currently in this NFT space,
| they're just not people you really are wanting to be doing
| business with. That doesn't say anything about the underlying
| technology, it's just a reflection of the people right now who
| are viewing it as an opportunity to rip customers off, or engage
| in money laundering, or other things like that.
|
| 1. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/gabe-newell-interview-
| steam...
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