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Heyzap (YC W09) adds option to pay game developers with Bitcoin

62 points| danielrhodes | 13 years ago |venturebeat.com | reply

19 comments

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[+] ajhit406|13 years ago|reply
Could someone explain why anyone would be foolish enough to pay in bitcoins right now given its meteoric rise over the past few weeks?
[+] kurtko|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] danielrhodes|13 years ago|reply
Paying out in Bitcoins is very low risk since there is only a small holding time between acquiring the Bitcoins and making the pay out.
[+] shawabawa3|13 years ago|reply
isn't that equivalent to asking why anyone would be foolish enough to not have 100% of their money in bitcoins given its meteoric rise over the past few weeks?

There are reasons to not have all your money in bitcoins, therefore there are reasons to sell bitcoins (even if you just bought them specifically for that transaction (for the anonymity for example))

edit: I realised this sounds a bit snarky, but I'm honestly curious. Is buying with bitcoins really that different from not investing in bitcoins?

[+] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] mehrzad|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] Skoofoo|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] nwh|13 years ago|reply
Game Center is infuriating if you don't want to use it. If you do decide to, it asks you to log into your iCloud account again.
[+] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] BrokenPipe|13 years ago|reply
usually you can pick but most people pin their btc prices to their own local currency for convenience.
[+] myspace|13 years ago|reply
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.