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Adult game developer’s PayPal funds held for over a month despite being legitimately sold on Steam [80k GBP]
(www.gamepressure.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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So when dealing with volume purchases via a secondary store front (as established in the article) doesn't need any kind of intercession from Steam or another processor to deal with any and all purchases? It's all completely autonomous with no intervention needed by anyone at all?
As long as merchant doesn't need to convert from crypto to regular currency, no third party is involved in the transaction, it's a direct P2P system - in other words - perfect digital cash
So you just need to say "I give this person .001 bitcoin" and they magically get it? That's wild to me.
Well, you take their address, sign a message with your private key saying .001 bitcoin goes there and propagate it over the network. But in very simple terms yep, bitcoins magically land on their address. Whole thing sustains itself on economic incentives and cryptography, without any central authority
So there is a network and backbone to it. And you need to do something more than "I give this person a bitcoins for my game" especially when working through a separate storefront. Both to ensure that the person receives their game and you receive their currency.
The problem with current transactions isn't the money itself, it's the services that use that currency.
Yes, Bitcoin is not a currency, it's an open permissionless network of trust secured not by access right managment and opacity but game theory and past energy. Very useful to build currencies. I recommend you Andreas Antonopoulos work, his content age very well and everything is under CreativeCommons. A great video to start is : What is Bitcoin and why does it matters?
It really depend where you live. For Venezualian, Lebanese, Turkish and many more people there is huge problem with their currencies and banking services. Also in Africa many ex-french colonies are forced to use Franc CFA which is basically an economic-leash by the french government. We can debate on the many issues with the USD currency but these are little (for now at least) compared to others.
Yes, it's a permissionless P2P network.
Signing and sending transaction is exactly it. Transaction says that you send your bitcoins to an address controlled by the other person.
Crypto doesn't ensure you get the product. Like with real cash, other party might just run away with money
Which is why intermediaries exist and why crypto isn't in any way a solution for the problem this entire post is about. And why bringing it up randomly is complete tech bro wankery.
Are you concerned that Valve runs away with your money?
Valve? Not concerned. Random company selling something I need for a good price? Sure.
The intermediaries are useful when dealing with less trustworthy merchants.
You know you can build an escrow out of a smart-contract (even on Bitcoin) using multi-sig to ensure both parties are satisfied ?
Yes, simply put, that's how it works. You should read the whitepaper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The first sentence: