

Heyzap (YC W09) adds option to pay game developers with Bitcoin - danielrhodes
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/07/heyzap-adds-option-to-pay-game-developers-with-bitcoin/#gSieQebq936MTvkV.02

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ajhit406
Could someone explain why anyone would be foolish enough to pay in bitcoins
right now given its meteoric rise over the past few weeks?

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kurtko
If you are sure it will keep going up at this pace, why not take everything
you own, sell it, and invest in (or: speculate on) Bitcoin? That's not a
rhetorical question.

Personally, given its volatility, it doesn't make much sense to me to hold
much in Bitcoin outside of what you plan to spend relatively immediately. It
could go up or down by 50% overnight - not a great store of value, either way.

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gojomo
Some don't mind volatility as long as (a) the long-term expected gain is
positive; and (b) the return is uncorrelated with more traditional
investments.

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SilasX
Ah, so _that's_ an indicator of where verbalist's comment[1] was coming from
about "developers wanting to be paid in Bitcoin"

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508031>

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obviouslygreen
Definitely interesting, and more options are (in most cases) a good thing...
the best application of this that's immediately obvious to me, though, is for
financially successful devs/shops to mark one of their games for bitcoin
income and use it as a test case.

I do hope, though, that it's not presented to small shops as being the same as
[insert traditional currency here]; while it's certainly our own
responsibility to be careful how we're paid, glossing over the realities of
Bitcoin could end up with busy or otherwise inattentive devs accepting
something that's just not the sure (or at least predictable) thing they need
in terms of payment.

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mehrzad
Unfortunately most users are annoyed by services like Heyzap and Openfeint.
Ironically, Game Center seems to get out of the way the best, but is still
pretty superfluous for a default app on a mobile operating system.

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Skoofoo
Exactly. It bugs me how much these types of services are making the front page
of HN, considering that they only undermine video game quality for the sake of
profit.

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jiggy2011
I wonder if you set a price amount in bitcoin or it just does a conversion
between BTC and USD (or some other currency).

If you set a price in BTC then if there is a drop in value, you might find
wake up the next day and find that lots of people took advantage of that as a
way to dump their BTC and managed to buy your $10 game for $1.

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BrokenPipe
usually you can pick but most people pin their btc prices to their own local
currency for convenience.

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ajhit406
This is interesting because I think this is the biggest vulnerability for
bitcoin. So far as people continue to peg bitcoin to their own currency, it
will continue to be thought of as a speculative opportunity and will face
insurmountable deflationary pressure.

Bitcoin needs to hit a tipping point in the density of merchants offering
bitcoin transactions, such that the general population can free themselves of
thinking of bitcoin as it relates to USD or EUR, and instead how the price of
a good or service in bitcoin relates to _other goods and services_ they can
consume with bitcoin.

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myspace
I'm surprised so many people in the tech community have fallen for this Ponzi
Scheme.

For example, many heard about "some guy bought a $25 pizza with 10,000
bitcoins", but no one has thought about what this means. It means someone now
has that 10,000 "coins" (which is close to 2'000,000). This also means someone
had this amount (and possibly much more).

And, finally, no one questions who posseses the first "coins".

That's why the creator is anonymous.

Just my 2 cents.

