Guild Wars 2

A lot of shady websites already sell gw2 gold for bitcoin. Instead of them being the only venue for people wanting to use bitcoin on gw2, what if the developers make it possible to buy gems for bitcoin?

I want to be able to buy gems using bitcoin.

There is a company called Bitpay (https://bitpay.com) that will help take any bitcoin payments and convert bitcoin straight into cash deposited in a bank account (with fees much cheaper than paypal!)

I would be very pleased if this could happen! Thank you!

They don’t adjust with Euro to US Dollars and you expect them to set a price with a currency that fluctuates as much as Bitcoin?

If this Bitpay service is so good then why don’t you use it so you can pay via one of the ways NCSOFT/ArenaNet already supports?

No, there is a reason the US Treasury is shutting down Bitcoin Operations one at a time. Its a influx way to launder Money and to pay for Crimes such as hits. Its a dirty Money business and does should NOT be used for things like GW2.

Prices don’t have to be set in bitcoin, rather, if I wanted to buy $10 worth of gem, then the spot price of bitcoin is used and I pay that amount that amount ($10) in bitcoin – so fluctuations isn’t an issue to the seller. Bitpay is a service like paypal – bitpay allows a seller to accept bitcoin like how paypal is used to accept dollars (except with bitpay, they will convert bitcoins to dollars for you if you want)

Sure, there are some instances where people launder money or pay for hits with bitcoin, but by far, the most used method for these things is CASH, not bitcoin. The US is only going after people who do illegal things with bitcoin and not bitcoin itself.

Now if only I could hear what one of the developers has to say in regards to accepting bitcoin…

What you are asking for is too new anyway, regardless of the implications involved with BitCoin/LiteCoin/etc.

I would love for ANet to add this as a payment method since this is an ideal use-case scenario a cryptocurrency like bitcoin was designed for. I have suggested this over at reddit gw2 also but unfortunately, the gw2 community is rather closed-minded about the idea despite me debunking many of their false beliefs.

Serphious.4087:

Now if only I could hear what one of the developers has to say in regards to accepting bitcoin…

Likewise, I would also like to hear Anet’s stance on the matter.

sobe.4157:

What you are asking for is too new anyway, regardless of the implications involved with BitCoin/LiteCoin/etc.

A couple years ago sure, but bitcoin is now 4+ years old so it’s hardly too new. In the crypto-community world, this timeframe is actually eons.

Behellagh.1468:

They don’t adjust with Euro to US Dollars and you expect them to set a price with a currency that fluctuates as much as Bitcoin?

The point you’re missing is that the btc exchange rate is actually irrelevant. You’re using btc as a means of exchange — if you exchange it back into fiat at the moment of transaction which substantially reduces volatility risk.

If this Bitpay service is so good then why don’t you use it so you can pay via one of the ways NCSOFT/ArenaNet already supports?

I looked at the OP’s post as Bitpay being one possible solution to make bitcoin integration seamless. It certainly isn’t the only solution and I don’t think the OP is saying ANet must use Bitpay.

Secondly, Bitpay only works if the merchant adopts it on their side. That is to say, customers and clients like us can’t just use Bitpay to convert btc->fiat because they’re not an exchange. Just like how you won’t be able to use a credit card at a grocery store if they don’t have visa/mastercard equipment setted up. Even if you could why would you even want to? It’s just not efficient.

sirsquishy.8531:

. . . Its a influx way to launder Money and to pay for Crimes such as hits. Its a dirty Money business and does should NOT be used for things like GW2.

What you’re describing is guilty by association. Criminals wear shoes, they also drive cars. Terrorist are funded by oil. Does that mean law abiding citizens like us shouldn’t use these products because they are, afterall, dirty?

Apparently you’re blind to the recent events with one of the more popular bitcoin sites going bankrupt and locking out “investors” from accounts worth hundreds of millions. Yes, Anet’s going to accept payment from a volatile, virtual, nonreal currency with a disgustingly large amount of risk over established mediums that transfer legitimate funds.

Short answer: No.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Apparently you’re blind to the recent events with one of the more popular bitcoin sites going bankrupt and locking out “investors” from accounts worth hundreds of millions. Yes, Anet’s going to accept payment from a volatile, virtual, nonreal currency with a disgustingly large amount of risk over established mediums that transfer legitimate funds.

What he said.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Apparently you’re blind to the recent events with one of the more popular bitcoin sites going bankrupt and locking out “investors” from accounts worth hundreds of millions. Yes, Anet’s going to accept payment from a volatile, virtual, nonreal currency with a disgustingly large amount of risk over established mediums that transfer legitimate funds.

I fail to see what mtgox exchange going bankrupt has anything do with this? FYI, gox hasn’t been a popular exchange for a long time. If you were keeping up with the crypto-currency scene, of course you would know that already. But all that is besides the point — your argument is the same as saying because a bank or some important financial entity went belly up that we should stop using fiat.

Me and the OP have already suggested one solution on how to mitigate that risk by taking volatility out of the equation. Now if you have some other legitimate objection backed up with reasonable support that doesn’t amount to more FUD or hearsay then please feel free to add to the discussion.

Here’s the problem. Bitcoin’s value varies too much to be an effective currency. The gem rates were set before the game went live in 2012 and has not changed in regard to the dollar’s, pound’s or euro’s exchange rate.

Let’s say then the bitcoin price for 800 gems is set by it’s value as of July 1, 2012 which would be about 1.6BC. Of course 1.6BC today is worth roughly $800. See one of the problems in accepting bitcoins. Their value is simply too volatile. And yes it is too much of a hassle to adjust the cost of gems based on the exchange rate of any of the currencies accepted.

greatwolf.1758:

…
A couple years ago sure, but bitcoin is now 4+ years old so it’s hardly too new. In the crypto-community world, this timeframe is actually eons…

What is that in “economy years”?

This is a passing fad and were it my business, I’d avoid being involved with botcoins (sic.).

No realm is safe from the cult of cryptocurrency

Why do you need to use bitcoins? Do you not have any dollars or euros?

I’m guessing when he’s not gaming, his rig is mining.

Bitcoin is a currency that is going to become problems for any company that has to show profits to shareholders. BC changes value more often then average stocks, and its not by a few % per float, but by several (20-30% depending on news, events around BC, and the rate at which BC is currently being awarded). Its to volatile for any legit company to consider taking on as a payment method right now. And with how its not backed by any physical form of payback (USD is backed by Gold out of the reserve, for example) it will always be a wash of a currency.

Until there is a standard around BC, I dont think ANY company should ever consider taking it on as a payment method, esp if you need to account for BC to your Local currency at an exchange rate.

When your ASIC miners get better (currently the best ASIC miner clusters are about even with the best GPU based Clusters), the rate at which BC is awarded is going to increase. That is going to devalue BC in the end. The more of that type of currency that is available, the less valuable it becomes. And that is why it cannot be consider a legit/real currency.

its more of a supply/demand model currently, and eventually supply is going to run rampant. That spells bad news for any investors and companies that would ‘bank’ that kind of currency as ‘profits’.

USD hadn’t been backed by gold since 1976.

Looks like Dell is now accepting bitcoins as a method of payment. Just putting it out there.

Any company betting on Bitcoin right now is either not too bright or desperate for any business they can get (looking at you, Dell).

greatwolf.1758:

Looks like Dell is now accepting bitcoins as a method of payment. Just putting it out there.

Via Coinbase as the intermediary. But as I’ve pointed out in my original post here, ANet set the cost once for each currency and has not “floated” the price of Gems against any since. So 800 Gems would be about 1.6 BC back in 2012 would now be over $1000. Seems a little pricey.

You can trade bitcoin for real cash right? so you can already buy gems with bitcoin.

All currencies are “fake” to a certain extent — they are (in most countries) only backed by people’s faith in their issuing authority. In the case of bitcoin, there’s a distinct lack of faith.

Even if that wasn’t the case, ANet has explained that, for a variety of reasons, they have no plans to take payment in currencies other thkitten dollars, euros, and British pounds. It seems more likely that they’d add Aussie dollars, Yen, or other currencies that are used by a substantial fraction of the player base.

And that’s without even getting into how many gems you could get for a bit coin.

people dont need bitcoin when they have visa, paypal, interactive to purchase online. why do you want to turn your money into something unstable and dangerous of losing value.
only those who have illegal cash from drug selling need bitcoin to cash out someone else money.

Bitcoin is a highly volatile currency due to its unstable market value.

No, no you cannot buy gems with bitcoins. How about get money for said bitcoins and buy gems with funds deposited to an acceptable form of payment?

“US Dollar is not backed by gold” – no, but it is backed by an entire country and a world market using it.

ANet has no gain what so ever from adding bitcoins or any other real or imagined currency as a way to pay.
On the contrary, they will have to pay fees to incorporate third party exchanges into their system.
It takes time to implement.
It’s an added security risk.
It’s an additional thing that can bug out.

Just go buy real currency and get your gems from that instead.

Only an idiot would accept bitcoin. Our in game gold is more stable.

Bitcoins are too murky and lack oversight for me to feel confident using them. Perhaps one day when it’s properly regulated and taxed I’ll change my mind. Until then, I have no faith in a currency where the exchange can simply vanish overnight and take all my hard-earned wealth with it.

With the US Treasury Department ruling that bitcoins are not currency but are in fact virtual assets, it is unlikely that many companies will be willing to take the enormous amount of risk involved with accepting them.

If you have bitcoins, you may want to consider dumping them as they are likely to become virtual Beanie Babies soon.

The problem is that they are taxable as property, not income. So correctly accounting for the value of anet’s bitcoin receipts (for capital gains purposes, GAAP/IASB accounting, etc…) could pose some interesting finance, accounting, and tax problems.

Behellagh.1468:

But as I’ve pointed out in my original post here, ANet set the cost once for each currency and has not “floated” the price of Gems against any since. So 800 Gems would be about 1.6 BC back in 2012 would now be over $1000. Seems a little pricey.

A simple solution is to just pull the current spot market price from various exchanges and average the going rate; that is one possible solution. This could obviously be automated so this should not make it any more troublesome.

Knocking out a script to do this is trivial, I would know since I’ve done it; shouldn’t take more than a day.

laokoko.7403:

You can trade bitcoin for real cash right? so you can already buy gems with bitcoin.

But if you do that than you’re just going back to the legacy financial system with all the problems and inefficiencies that come with it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

All currencies are “fake” to a certain extent — they are (in most countries) only backed by people’s faith in their issuing authority. In the case of bitcoin, there’s a distinct lack of faith.

I can certainly agree with you on the first part, fiat currency, or any currency for that matter only works as long as there’s confidences behind it. As for the lack of faith behind btc, you’ll have to explain a bit how you came to that conclusion because it isn’t congruent with what I am seeing.

For example, if there is a lack of faith as you suggest, the price would not be where it is at today. If there’s a lack of faith then there wouldn’t be new bitcoin startups popping up and in fact a whole bitcoin industry wouldn’t have come into existence at all.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Even if that wasn’t the case, ANet has explained that, for a variety of reasons, they have no plans to take payment in currencies other thkitten dollars, euros, and British pounds. It seems more likely that they’d add Aussie dollars, Yen, or other currencies that are used by a substantial fraction of the player base.

But things change, policies can change. I mean look at ebay, once a upon a time they forbid selling virtual currencies on their auction. But their singing quite a different tune today though.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

And that’s without even getting into how many gems you could get for a bit coin.

See my reply above to Behellagh.

greatwolf.1758:

Behellagh.1468:

But as I’ve pointed out in my original post here, ANet set the cost once for each currency and has not “floated” the price of Gems against any since. So 800 Gems would be about 1.6 BC back in 2012 would now be over $1000. Seems a little pricey.

A simple solution is to just pull the current spot market price from various exchanges and average the going rate; that is one possible solution. This could obviously be automated so this should not make it any more troublesome.

Knocking out a script to do this is trivial, I would know since I’ve done it; shouldn’t take more than a day.

But they haven’t done it with more established currencies like the Euro and British Pound so why would you think they would make an exception for bitcoin?

Alot of the people posting here are really ignorant. Many people in this thread saying Bitcoin is too volatile blah blah blah, but they don’t know that the Bitcoin ecosystem has grown so much where volatility is not the slightest issue for merchants. The merchants don’t have to hold the bitcoins, they get dollars in their bank account the next day just like credit cards.

The benefit is there is no risk of fraud/chargeback and its instant. It’s actually in the merchants interest to accept Bitcoin. There is no reason not to, its cheaper and more secure in every way. It’s just new so alot of people don’t know about it yet.

Recently, Dell, Newegg, TigerDirect, and like a million other places started accepting it to get the upper hand over their competitors. There is no volatility risk, or really any risk for the merchants.

The Bitcoin ecosystem is growing so rapidly, but alot of naysayers are still ignorant saying MtGox, virtual money, backed by nothing, blah blah. Oh well, these are the people who will miss out on good opportunities. Don’t cry later.

ArenaNet would probably see alot more revenue coming from the Bitcoin community as well.

If you’re a business, theres no reason not to accept it. More customers, 0% fraud risk, instant payments, next day dollars in your bank account, no volatility risk.

Join my guild, its called Bitcoin Ballers.

My wife is a hardcore GW2 player and I bought gems for her with Bitcoin several times already. There are gem resellers on the web that accept Bitcoin.

Also, some of the arguments against Bitcoin in this thread are silly. You don’t need to adjust the price in order to accept Bitcoin, just like you don’t have to adjust price in Euros when the credit card issuer is in, say, Czech Republic. The payer gets debited Czech Crowns and the payee receives Euros. You can have the same thing with Bitcoin.

Last year, when I wanted to buy GW2, ArenaNet did not want to process my debit card because I live in a different country than the issuing bank. I opened a ticket with them and they said it’s not possible. I had to buy GW2 from a reseller. If ArenaNet did accept Bitcoin directly, they would have made more money (as the reseller wouldn’t have got their cut).

Yalon.6812:

My wife is a hardcore GW2 player and I bought gems for her with Bitcoin several times already. There are gem resellers on the web that accept Bitcoin.

How is that possible since you can’t trade gems? Buying gem card serial codes would be the only way I would think this is possible.

Again, ANet and possibly NCSOFT, does not float the value of their proxy currency against real currencies. They set an exchange rate and stick with it regardless how unbalanced it becomes between them. bitcoin is merely the most volatile of them changing by 10000% since the game launched. By comparison the Euro and British Pound by only change by 8% relative to the dollar.

Again, it’s not a matter of how easy or hard it is, it’s that they simply don’t float their gem conversion rate at all.

Behellagh.1468:

How is that possible since you can’t trade gems? Buying gem card serial codes would be the only way I would think this is possible.

They buy the gem cards and when you buy it from them, you’re provided with a scan of the code.

Behellagh.1468:

Again, ANet and possibly NCSOFT, does not float the value of their proxy currency against real currencies. They set an exchange rate and stick with it regardless how unbalanced it becomes between them.

As I wrote above, they don’t set it for all the existing currencies, only for a bunch of them. For others, the bank settlement systems take care of the conversion on the background. You can do the same thing with Bitcoin if you want and it is cheaper.

Even completely outside of guild wars I occasionally buy stuff from US or China with a debit card or pay pal, and it works even though the seller denominates their prices in US dollars and my card/paypal is in Euros. It’s no different with Bitcoin.

Theres so many things you can do with Bitcoin in mmo’s. Each user account could have a linked wallet. Users could trade directly between themselves in bitcoin, opening up opportunity to actually create real paid jobs in game jobs or tasks. Content could be made with bitcoin as a reward, the first guild to drop a boss or whatever, or you could even dash small amounts of bitcoins about as the occasional lucky drop from a mob.

You could open up an ingame casino, betting on things that happen within the GW2 world.

Bottom line is it doesn’t matter what company decides to implement it or not eventually it will be implemented with games and its going to be very popular.

But regardless doing any of the above simply accepting bitcoin as payment method is a no brainer for any retailer, theres no cost or risk and you have a greater audience so why not.

WALL OF TEXT AHEAD

There is a lot of misinformation in this thread, that I prefer not to comment directly on. For now I want to lay out some facts (I will mark my opinions as necessary in parenthesis) to clear up misconceptions about Bitcoin for ANet. “Merchants” refer to ArenaNet, and “Customers” refer to us players:

• Volatility has no impact to merchants due to services like BitPay and Coinbase which convert on-the-fly. (Given these services can pay you in your preferred currency, you can probably declare your revenue in said currency. Your experience may vary depending on local laws.)

• Using such service, while pricing in btc can vary, the price in dollars can be quoted to customers. (Merchants understand bitcoin’s volatility, which is why they rarely price their goods in actual btc. This makes bitcoin “not a currency” but a medium of exchange. Which is fine by the bitcoin community)

• PayPal charges 2.4% + $0.30 per transaction (quote is from Australia, not sure where to find USA/Europe), BitPay charges $30/mth to $300/mth, Coinbase charges 1%.
  e.g. $10 in gems = $9.46 through PayPal, $9.90 through Coinbase, BitPay requires you to achieve $3,000 to $30,000 in sales a month to break even with Coinbase. Enterprise subscription to BitPay might be cheaper/more expensive.

• Accepting pure bitcoins without immediate conversion is risky due to volatility. Therefore adopting a service like the above is better. (Also probably lets them worry about the tax implications of accepting bitcoin. You just worry about your revenue tax as per normal. Again local laws will vary) At the same time, pure bitcoins don’t suffer any transaction fee on the merchant side. As the exchange rate gets more stable in the future, it may make sense to switch (unless local laws are not favourable).

• Bitcoin isn’t anonymous. Transactions are publicly visible, and the moment you exchange a good or service for bitcoins, you usually need to enter your address for your items to ship to. Merchants usually require billing & shipping addresses for online/virtual goods anyway when taking credit cards, or in the case of PayPal where they already have the information in the customer’s accounts. (You can’t fund a terrorist with Gems, ever)

• You can’t do a charge back with Bitcoin. This removes the merchant’s need to disable accounts if a customer commits charge back fraud, because there is no charge back fraud. The risk is entirely on the customer’s side, as opposed to credit cards and PayPal where the risk is on the merchant side.

Given all the risk is on the customer side, why do they use Bitcoin? Well… (this section is ALL opinion, with some facts to back up my thought process.):

• A. People are fed up with the fiat system.

Governments print more money which devalues the currency. You don’t see how much it affects you because the money is spread out everywhere. But once they get piled into one location you’ll see how much money there is that you will feel it is worthless.

The US government is trillions in debt. The Germans in WW1 (or was it WW2?) printed money to bail out, and screwed over their system. There is the slightest risk the US government plans to do the same, but in a controlled, hidden manner. If someone can figure out the scheme or leak it to people like WikiLeaks, USD will plummet, if they can’t, then the US government wins.

The banking system fell over in the GFC, and Bitcoin was created in response to the bailouts. Why are organisations allowed to be bailed out anyway? It speaks ill of the fiat system, that you can always be forgiven if you make a critical, fatal mistake. There is the notion that the debt system has become “too big to fail”.

Most people probably don’t know when fiat money was introduced it was ridiculed, not praised. The fact when it stopped being banked by gold, people thought it stopped being valuable. Today, there is no intrinsic value of a USD. If USD can be backed by a non-tangible concept called “trust”, then so can Bitcoin. I trust bitcoins a lot more than I trust USD, but that might be my bias because I’m from Australia.

• B. People see it as an investment opportunity.

Bitcoin is said to be the first ever deflationary currency to exist because of its fixed supply. There’s two types of events that give rise to bitcoin growth. The first type is adoption. Over time, bitcoins will be spread across millions of people as goods and services are exchanged. It gets harder to get a bigger sum of bitcoins.

Every 4 years, bitcoins get harder to mint. By 40 years time, 95% of the bitcoins will be minted. This means at this point bitcoins will start to see a deflationary effect. Like fiat money, you can lose access to your bitcoins if you die of old age or carelessness, etc. and don’t pass it on.

(TBC)

And as this happens, Bitcoin’s real supply is less, thus it will be worth more if demand is constant. This is the second type of growth for bitcoin, which is basically like a naturally occurring “interest rate”.

Bitcoins unlike fiat money can never be increased without consensus of the entire community, and not at the whim of one government. If it does increase, it devalues their holdings, so there is no incentive to do so. However because Bitcoin is all software and networks, it can be divided to as many decimal places as needed (current limit is. Unlike printing money where your pie shrinks, with Bitcoin it’s like keeping the same chunk of the pie. More people will agree with increased divisibility than increased supply, because it keeps their wealth the same.

While this may end up with the ridiculous notion at 1 bitcoin will keep the economy alive forever, Bitcoin’s security can and likely will be upgraded over time in the distant future (like, every 50-100 years), due to Moore’s law or new technology breakthroughs. Older coins that don’t move to new, secure addresses will eventually be recovered by gravediggers/treasure hunters. This means it can keep up with new technology, and keep the supply of bitcoins healthy. None of this of course needs to happen now, because the current security is more than enough for the technology we have today.

Because bitcoins can only ever be 21 million, it makes economic sense to hold some money in bitcoins (even $10, or $100) now just in case it does take off and go through the moon. If it doesn’t, who cares, it was yesterday’s Gem money. But you’ll start to see the problem with fiat once you do. Because the value of fiat decreases over time, you need more fiat to buy a bitcoin. In reverse, if you hold your bitcoin long enough, you’ll see it can be traded back for fiat for a higher price not because it is valued by more people but because there is also simply too much fiat.

• C. It’s an efficient system if everyone uses it.

Transactions comply instantly and safely confirm within 1 hour, globally. A bank needs 24 hours to confirm a local transfer, up to 3 days for international transfers. The bottlenecks when you first buy bitcoins start to show where you see fiat is the slower part of the whole process.

• D. Some do it just for fun.

In all seriousness, Bitcoin isn’t going to bring down USD, and governments can’t bring down Bitcoin. It’s just a fresh, fun currency to use. People have even sprung up clones of Bitcoin, collectively “Altcoins”, to try and find the real “sweet spot” with the transaction system (confirming transactions faster or slower, or using different algorithms, or even going with a non-deflationary minting rate). The true beauty of this is if you use a conversion service that accepts them, you can theoretically accept them all at no risk.

• E. It’s energy efficient compared to fiat

Think of all the co2 emissions the money printing machines emit to print out money. The money needed to hire vans and security to ship cash from ATM to bank to ATM (and the co2 emissions these cars emit). And the trees!! I don’t have the statistics, but some article (if you google it) has researched the amount compared between the two systems and Bitcoin is significantly less. Bitcoin lets the global warming group put their money where their mouth is. And they do. I don’t care too much in this space though (hence not knowing the stats).

• F. It’s a Ponzi Scheme. In it to win it!!!!

(It’s a joke btw). A ponzi scheme means there is one perpetrator behind all the entries into the game. Bitcoin is purely market driven, so by definition it isn’t a ponzi scheme. Even if it is a variant of a ponzi scheme, the software has been created regardless and can be used for more than just currency. If someone as brilliant kitten .N. who knows cryptography inside out, and understands Keynesian & Austrian economics inside out, and the banking system, and knows C/C++, and creates a ponzi scheme for the hell of it, then I don’t mind falling for this man’s ponzi scheme. He has my respect. (The software source code isn’t even in his control anymore, btw. That’s the beauty of open source and reinforces the idea it isn’t a ponzi)

Disclaimer:

I’ve been playing GW2 since release and GW1 for 5-6. Definitely not a scrub that just bought GW2 just to comment on this. I know my economics & my tech, and Bitcoin is fascinating in both the finance and IT world. Intelligent people around the world talk about Bitcoin and how it can change the world, and everyone else is debating whether it is a ponzi scheme, a volatile trap or what not. Bitcoin is just what the world needs, but not the one it deserves.

Let me try to simplify the situation:

1. NCSOFT has decided, for reasons good and bad, to accept only 3 currencies
2. bitcoin isn’t a well established currency, at least not yet, so it’s hardly likely to be considered as one of the first choices if they reconsider the limited list

NCSOFT runs a business, not a non-profit dedicated to changing the social order by promoting a potentially desirable alternative to government-backed currencies. There are almost no financial benefits to them to add bitcoin (over e.g. Yen or even Canadian dollars) and all sorts of downsides.

The volatility of Bitcoin doesn’t matter for companies wanting to use it a s a payment option. When you use a payment processor like bitpay you don’t have to set your bitcoin price. Here is how it works:

• ANet sets the gem price to 10$
• If you select bitcoin as a payment option bitpay will automatically calculate the current bitcoin price for 10$
• You have a certain amount of time to buy gems at that bitcoin price, before this price is invalidated
• ANet can decide if they either want to get the bitcoins itself or just receive the 10$

There is absolutely no risk for the product/service provider. Bitpay does everything for you.
If you say that that is awful to rely on another company like bitpay, I would like to remind you that ANet allows to pay with paysafe cards and paypal, which are also only companies processing the Payments of virtual money.

Look, I could sit here and try and explain how the structure if bitcoin is fundamentally flawed as a currency; how it’s a natural asset bubble with a finite shelf life baked into it that isn’t even remotely suited to replace a national currency.

I think that is just a distraction of details away from the point.

The point? Bitcoin’s payment network is a huge technological breakthrough. The technology behind bitcoin is going to revolutionize the way we pay for everything – our credit card networks are going to be torn down and rebuilt behind it, and once it starts everyone from the banks to the credit card companies to the payment networks like paypal are going to get on the train or disappear.

It is that big a deal.

It is also not going to have anything to do with the bitcoins in your virtual wallet at all.

Bitcoin is a prototype. It is a fantastically successful prototype, but it is the the Wright Brother’s biplane puttering along compared to the fighter jets on the horizon. The cryptocurrency equivalent is coming, and once it is here it’ll shove your cute little bitcoin network and your bitcoins into the closet next to your 14k modem.

So by all means, use the extant bitcoin payment network now. It’s a cool little piece of technology that at least for the time being is efficient and worth supporting.

But investing your money in bitcoins? I wouldn’t even think about it.

I’m going to sound like an echo here but.

ANet doesn’t dynamically adjust the price of Gems for Euros or the British Pound.

They set their value once, back in 2012, and it has stayed there every since even though both the Euro and British Pound is now worth 8% more than the US Dollar today, which means it’s cheaper to buy gems with Dollars than with Euros and Pounds (ignoring the VAT added for those two currencies).

If they aren’t going to do it themselves with the Euro and Pound, they aren’t going to do it with Bitcoin.

ANet’s or NCSOFT’s choice of acceptable currencies and payment methods are to cover their butts both financially and legally as much as it providing convenience to their customers.

So until Bitcoin is tied to one of the current payment systems they accept, and they get paid in one of their three accepted currencies, it’s not going to happen.

I would go out of my way to buy gems with bit coins Anet please take my bitcoins!

Wow… Ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme, they might not be exactly the right label, but it’s pretty close. There’s definitely something shady about it, and not just because I first saw the term in an article about a kind of eBay website for criminals…

Talk about printing money! As more people trade bitcoins they are automatically divided into smaller bits, like splitting stocks I guess, making those with larger chunks of them automatically richer. The guy who started it doesn’t even need to maintain control over the process, he can just sit on a stockpile of whole coins and sell one whenever he wants to buy a new Rolls Royce or something.

But the problem is that values don’t always go up. Fifteen years ago investors threw money at any company that ended in “.com” and ten years ago flipping houses was a foolproof way to get rich. Eventually investors realized they were throwing money into a black hole, the tech companies promised much more than they could deliver, and flippers ended up flipping houses to each other and it turned out no one could afford the loans used to buy them. Everything that goes up, eventually comes down.

As Ensign said, eventually people will get bored with bitcoins and something newer and shinier will come along. Then their value will crash once people don’t want them any more, and the companies that trade them will go bankrupt. Unfortunately, they will also take a lot of innocent fools’ money with them when they do. If I ran a company I wouldn’t touch the things with lead-lined gloves.

Behellagh.1468:

I’m going to sound like an echo here but.

ANet doesn’t dynamically adjust the price of Gems for Euros or the British Pound.

Maybe instead of writing you should be reading. You can still (at least theoretically) buy gems even if your own debit/credit card is denominated in a unit that ArenaNet does not support, because forex settlement occurs in the background. Just like when I travel to the US, the merchants there do not need to quote their prices in Euros in order for me to pay with my debit card. I assume you’re a US citizen who never went abroad and never bought anything abroad to bring up such nonsense.

ArenaNet already lost money on me and my wife, because for one reason or another the payment with the methods that they officially support didn’t work (card’s issuing bank in a country different from my residence, paysafecard and my bank not cooperating due to high level of fraud, …). Instead we ended up buying either the game or gems from a reseller which didn’t suffer from these problems. And this loss is valid irrespective of Bitcoin, it merely is exacerbated by Bitcoin, because if the resellers didn’t take Bitcoin, ArenaNet would have lost even more money as we couldn’t have purchased anything at all.

Bigpoint Games is a company of a size similar to ArenaNet (but with more users) and they don’t have a problem with taking Bitcoin payments. They also do not have to re-quote anything because they use a payment processor, just like you use a payment processor when accepting credit card payments.

To exacerbate the problem even further, my original post was deleted by a moderator, with the reasoning that “Discussions of gold/gem selling, in-game abuse, hacking, exploiting, and the like are not allowed on the forums.” It looks like ArenaNet does not actually want their users to pay them.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

NCSOFT runs a business, not a non-profit dedicated to changing the social order by promoting a potentially desirable alternative to government-backed currencies. There are almost no financial benefits to them to add bitcoin (over e.g. Yen or even Canadian dollars) and all sorts of downsides.

You got it exactly the opposite way. A decision to not accept Bitcoin is costing ArenaNet money.