The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67. Which means for a purchase larger than $34, Bitcoin is cheaper than the average credit card transaction fee.
For a ~60 minute confirmation target. It’s $0.77 for a 20 minute confirmation target right now. The daily average is $1.03.
And lets not forget that the only reason the price is so low now is because people aren’t competing much for those transactions. If people actually used bitcoin to buy games the transaction fee would increase significantly.
There are are no other fees for holding crypto, you only pay when you move it from one place to another, those fees change depending on time of day/week as well. Though some services (like coincards) may take additional processing fees.
A credit card, in the US, has a transaction fee for the vendor, 1-3% of the purchase price, sometimes with a flat few cents fee on top.
The consumer has no transaction fee, but does pay interest (around 28% annually) if they don’t pay off the full balance every month (if they do pay it in full at the end of the month, there is no interest charge). Usually there will be a 1-2% cash back for the consumer as well.
Some credit cards also have an annual fee for the consumer. These generally have higher cash back rewards and higher vendor transaction fees than those that don’t.
Don’t forget secured cards, which require an upfront deposit, and cards with regular monthly or annual fees, simply for having them, regardless of whether you use them or not.
Thats the kind of credit cards you get offered if you are bad with credit cards (cough most Americans are cough thats kinda the whole business model cough), or, if someone steals your identity and you either don’t have enough time or money or otherwise can’t sufficiently prove to credit reporting agencies / banks that that is what happened.
Go to a credit union. Your local credit union will offer better rates and good limits with low fees compared to big banks. My first card at 18 was a secured card, $500 limit and a 4% interest if you didn’t pay off your card. After six months it went to am unsecured ans $1500 limit. All with no fees.
Yeah, I know it can be hit or miss depending on your location, but I have had similarly good experiences with my local credit union… you just prove to them in a more old fashioned way that you’re responsible, and they’ll often be flexible with you in ways that banks aren’t.
The merchant pays the fee. With cryptocurrencies, the consumer pays the fee. Some sites offer a discount for paying with cryptocurrency as a result. For example, most precious metals dealers who accept Bitcoin offer a 3% discount for using it.
You only have to wait one hour for the transaction to be confirmed. It also takes a shit load of energy and is extremely inefficient compared to credit card payment processors. Woohoo!
No, and I never stated that. I just think it’s stupid to group all of crypto as an environmentally unsustainable technology. Following your logic, switching to electric cars isn’t worth it because the 100 years of petroleum pollution won’t disappear.
Meanwhile the US military’s energy budget eclipses global crypto mining essentially to maintain petrodollar dominance and American residents pay for it.
the fee might be higher at some points but you’re just blabbering. check mempool.space and actually look at what fees are at rn + consider that there are many chains and l2s that can be used for payment. B)
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying. That and do you expect enough normal people to learn about L2s and chains to make it worthwhile for Valve or whoever to implement support for anything besides the main chains of 2-3 major cryptos and stablecoins on ethereum main?
Yeah, there are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn’t want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn’t necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
People who use credit cards don’t pay the transaction fee. If the product is priced at 10 Stanly nickle they only play 10 Stanley nickle. Lot of credit cards also offer cash back so people might get 1-5% back depending on what the category for the month is.
When it comes to transaction fees you are going to have to sell the vender on it than the consumer since they are the one paying.
Oh you’re definitely paying the credit card fee too, but since it’s the vendor who gets billed it’s just priced into the product. That’s why the product costs 10 Stanly nickle instead of 9 Stanly nickle.
Pay same in cash or credit. Priced in or not what the company asks for is what the consumer pays, so point being these crypto transaction arguments make no difference when it comes to fees. Like you said end retail price is already priced in.
Company wants 10 Stanley nickles consumer is charged 10 Stanley nickles regardless of payment method.
Depends on the vendor. There are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts, which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
But it’s not variable so the seller prices it in. Switch to Bitcoin and you have to pay it while prices likely stay the same. Also lately most of my games have been under 30 EUR tbh
yes I expect l2s to catch on in different ways and yes I hope that a lot of places like steam or whatever properly implement at least bitpay or something similar in house.
I mean either you care enough about payment processor censorship to go around them or you don’t. If the extra dollar isn’t worth it to you then just make your choice.
Nobody is going to rush to implement a payment system where the fees can change 5x hour to hour because that’s just customer dissatisfaction waiting to happen.
That’s actually one of the matured parts of the crypto ecosystem that has existed for years already, as it was one of the most immediate needs. Last I checked Stripe and Bitpay were the most popular options for vendors.
Yeah, I’m going to buy my games with bitcoin now.
Oh shit, the fee is higher than the price of the game, can I use Litecoin ?
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67. Which means for a purchase larger than $34, Bitcoin is cheaper than the average credit card transaction fee.
For a ~60 minute confirmation target. It’s $0.77 for a 20 minute confirmation target right now. The daily average is $1.03.
And lets not forget that the only reason the price is so low now is because people aren’t competing much for those transactions. If people actually used bitcoin to buy games the transaction fee would increase significantly.
I don’t have a credit card. If you pay per transaction, is there at least no monthly base fee?
There are are no other fees for holding crypto, you only pay when you move it from one place to another, those fees change depending on time of day/week as well. Though some services (like coincards) may take additional processing fees.
A credit card, in the US, has a transaction fee for the vendor, 1-3% of the purchase price, sometimes with a flat few cents fee on top.
The consumer has no transaction fee, but does pay interest (around 28% annually) if they don’t pay off the full balance every month (if they do pay it in full at the end of the month, there is no interest charge). Usually there will be a 1-2% cash back for the consumer as well.
Some credit cards also have an annual fee for the consumer. These generally have higher cash back rewards and higher vendor transaction fees than those that don’t.
Don’t forget secured cards, which require an upfront deposit, and cards with regular monthly or annual fees, simply for having them, regardless of whether you use them or not.
Thats the kind of credit cards you get offered if you are bad with credit cards (cough most Americans are cough thats kinda the whole business model cough), or, if someone steals your identity and you either don’t have enough time or money or otherwise can’t sufficiently prove to credit reporting agencies / banks that that is what happened.
Go to a credit union. Your local credit union will offer better rates and good limits with low fees compared to big banks. My first card at 18 was a secured card, $500 limit and a 4% interest if you didn’t pay off your card. After six months it went to am unsecured ans $1500 limit. All with no fees.
Yeah, I know it can be hit or miss depending on your location, but I have had similarly good experiences with my local credit union… you just prove to them in a more old fashioned way that you’re responsible, and they’ll often be flexible with you in ways that banks aren’t.
Thanks.
The merchant pays the fee. With cryptocurrencies, the consumer pays the fee. Some sites offer a discount for paying with cryptocurrency as a result. For example, most precious metals dealers who accept Bitcoin offer a 3% discount for using it.
You only have to wait one hour for the transaction to be confirmed. It also takes a shit load of energy and is extremely inefficient compared to credit card payment processors. Woohoo!
I only buy games at $30 or cheaper. So that won’t work for me 🤷♂️
Cumrocket is the way!
Thanks for the tip, I’m putting all my life savings into it then.
This exists too ::: spoiler spoiler https://coinstats.app/coins/8fZL148nnC168RAVCZh4PkjvMZmxMEfMLDhoziWVPnqf_solana/ :::
Bitcoin is pretty old, newer cryptocurrencies are more efficient.
I’m glad we’re spending the equivalent of a couple dozen million households of electricity on it
Let’s not ask how much power Visa and MasterCard use for their global monopoly.
Literally orders of magnitude less? Are you not familiar with how proof of work crypto operates? Being energy inefficient is the whole point.
You’re so right, environmental impact has not been assessed by any cryptocurrency ever made. Literally zilch. None. Nada.
? And that makes bitcoins waste disapear?
No, and I never stated that. I just think it’s stupid to group all of crypto as an environmentally unsustainable technology. Following your logic, switching to electric cars isn’t worth it because the 100 years of petroleum pollution won’t disappear.
Meanwhile the US military’s energy budget eclipses global crypto mining essentially to maintain petrodollar dominance and American residents pay for it.
Yeah I’m using this cool new Lightning cryptocurrency, check it out.
Lightning network exists too
Litecoin is cool.
the fee might be higher at some points but you’re just blabbering. check mempool.space and actually look at what fees are at rn + consider that there are many chains and l2s that can be used for payment. B)
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying. That and do you expect enough normal people to learn about L2s and chains to make it worthwhile for Valve or whoever to implement support for anything besides the main chains of 2-3 major cryptos and stablecoins on ethereum main?
Average credit card transaction fee is ~2%. So a dollar of Bitcoin fees makes Bitcoin cheaper for any purchase over $50.
The transaction fee is not paid by the consumer (directly), and lord knows sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method.
It depends, I have shopped at places where they will discount up to 15% by paying cash.
Yeah, there are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn’t want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn’t necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
I hope the EU to come up with their own payment process to compete against and be a mainstream alternative to the US based ones.
Sadly, this is probably true. Unless they’re trying to steer customers away from more troublesome payment providers.
People who use credit cards don’t pay the transaction fee. If the product is priced at 10 Stanly nickle they only play 10 Stanley nickle. Lot of credit cards also offer cash back so people might get 1-5% back depending on what the category for the month is.
When it comes to transaction fees you are going to have to sell the vender on it than the consumer since they are the one paying.
Oh you’re definitely paying the credit card fee too, but since it’s the vendor who gets billed it’s just priced into the product. That’s why the product costs 10 Stanly nickle instead of 9 Stanly nickle.
Pay same in cash or credit. Priced in or not what the company asks for is what the consumer pays, so point being these crypto transaction arguments make no difference when it comes to fees. Like you said end retail price is already priced in.
Company wants 10 Stanley nickles consumer is charged 10 Stanley nickles regardless of payment method.
Depends on the vendor. There are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts, which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
Yeah good point, they’re not discounting the credit increase for the crypto buyers. That might even be against their credit processor contract.
There’s also the whole taxable event issue some countries have if someone buys something with crypto.
But it’s not variable so the seller prices it in. Switch to Bitcoin and you have to pay it while prices likely stay the same. Also lately most of my games have been under 30 EUR tbh
yes I expect l2s to catch on in different ways and yes I hope that a lot of places like steam or whatever properly implement at least bitpay or something similar in house.
I mean either you care enough about payment processor censorship to go around them or you don’t. If the extra dollar isn’t worth it to you then just make your choice.
Nobody is going to rush to implement a payment system where the fees can change 5x hour to hour because that’s just customer dissatisfaction waiting to happen.
That’s actually one of the matured parts of the crypto ecosystem that has existed for years already, as it was one of the most immediate needs. Last I checked Stripe and Bitpay were the most popular options for vendors.