I’ve seen this a lot, and there are problems with it. People are not going to want to go through setting up a crypto wallet just to buy a game. People are not going to be happy with Itch.io doing it transparently behind the scenes (who knows where they are sending it to). Creators are not going to be happy with having to pay higher transaction fees. And all this would apply to all games sold on Itch, not just the spicy ones, since Mastercard and Visa would absolutely block them if they tried it.
Why not just use something like Wero (or a hypothetical global equivalent) and use direct bank to bank transfers with no payment processor acting as an intermediary?
I don’t think that someone is talking about using BTC or ETH. They’re literally unusable to make purchases (multiple minute settling times and the high costs you mentioned) but any other functional L1 would work. Algorand for examply has ~3second block times with instant finality and costs a fraction of a fraction of a cent to use the network. Those fees couple be subsidised they’re so low. They’re significantly lower than a rail like Visa or MasterCard. But you’re right, implementing it so anyone can easily use and access it is key.
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be realistic to say “we accept crypto now and also are refusing to comply with credit card content policies” right away anyways, because that would just lose them all their business. The better plan would be to do what they seem to be doing; comply in the short term as best they can, while simultaneously looking to branch out with the payment options they accept, so that at some point in the future credit card companies might have less leverage.
I’ve seen this a lot, and there are problems with it. People are not going to want to go through setting up a crypto wallet just to buy a game. People are not going to be happy with Itch.io doing it transparently behind the scenes (who knows where they are sending it to). Creators are not going to be happy with having to pay higher transaction fees. And all this would apply to all games sold on Itch, not just the spicy ones, since Mastercard and Visa would absolutely block them if they tried it.
Why not just use something like Wero (or a hypothetical global equivalent) and use direct bank to bank transfers with no payment processor acting as an intermediary?
I don’t think that someone is talking about using BTC or ETH. They’re literally unusable to make purchases (multiple minute settling times and the high costs you mentioned) but any other functional L1 would work. Algorand for examply has ~3second block times with instant finality and costs a fraction of a fraction of a cent to use the network. Those fees couple be subsidised they’re so low. They’re significantly lower than a rail like Visa or MasterCard. But you’re right, implementing it so anyone can easily use and access it is key.
Edited bad autocorrect
They didn’t block Steam back when it accepted Bitcoin, or even complain afaik
Steam wasn’t using it to bypass their policies and demands.
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be realistic to say “we accept crypto now and also are refusing to comply with credit card content policies” right away anyways, because that would just lose them all their business. The better plan would be to do what they seem to be doing; comply in the short term as best they can, while simultaneously looking to branch out with the payment options they accept, so that at some point in the future credit card companies might have less leverage.