Half Of Bitcoin’s Transactions On Steam Were Fraudulent: Gabe Newell

Half of bitcoin’s transactions on Steam were fraudulent according to Valve President Gabe Newell who doubled down on his company’s anti-crypto sentiment, saying all NFT games are ripping customers off so let’s find out more of what he had to say in today’s latest Bitcoin news.

Half of Bitcoin’s transactions on gaming platform Steam were reportedly fraudulent before removing BTC as a payment option according to the president of Valve Gabe Newell. He said:

“We had problems when we started accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment option. 50% of those transactions were fraudulent, which is a mind-boggling number. These were customers we didn’t want to have.”

He also said that the crypto space is populated with actors which are not people that you want to interact with. Steam introduced BTC as a payment option in 2016 and abandoned the experiment in December 2017 because of crypto’s price volatility and a huge increase in fees to process transactions on the BTC network. Newell told PC Gamer that BTC’s price made it a nightmare to use for transactions because a game could cost $10 one day and $100 the other. In another interview he noted that the volatility of crypto means that customers have no idea what price they are actually paying, adding that they are anchored to a cryptocurrency but most people’s wages are not in crypto.

The company still remains open on the possibility of distributed ledgers and blockchain technology but Newell still remains skeptical of their benefits:

 “There’s a lot of really interesting technology in blockchains and figuring out how to do a distributed ledger. I think that people haven’t figured out why you actually need a distributed ledger.”

Valve made headlines in late 2021 with a decision to ban games that are built on the blockchain and issue or allow the exchange of cryptos or NFTs. Newell also doubled down on the stance, saying that mostNFT-based games are ripping customers off. Newell said that the things done in the crypto space are very sketchy but that blockchain is a great technology.

After another rejection at $40,000, BTC slipped by $3000 to a four-day low at $37,000 and most other altcoins entered the red today. One exception however is Uniswap which surged by 10% and neared $10. last week was a roller-coaster ride for the financial markets and BTC represented a free market known for the volatility which was among the leaders in terms of enhanced price fluctuations. With Russia launching its special military operation in Ukraine, BTC dips to $37K and barely recovered.