Curious how do you know they were bad actors, given the anonymity? Were those some known stolen bitcoin wallets or something? Sorry if the answer is obvious, I'm not a bitcoin user.

Good bitcoin purchases:

  $22 [email protected]
  [30 minutes later]
  $50 [email protected]
  [30 minutes later]
  $15 [email protected]
  etc.

Bad bitcoin purchases:

  $1.00 [email protected] [1 second later]
  $1.00 [email protected] [1 second later]
  $1.00 [email protected] [1 second later]
  $1.00 [email protected] [1 second later]
  $1.00 [email protected] [1 second later]
  etc.

(queue removal of bitcoin)

Have you considered allowing them if you have a valid credit card on file. For example, I'm currently a Humble Monthly subscriber which already gives me a one click purchase options through the credit card on file.

Vultr, a VPS Host, accepts Bitcoins but started to require a valid credit card or Paypal purchase before accepting Bitcoins to prevent ToS violators who used Bitcoin.

But would that not defeat the purpose of Bitcoin (don't need to interact with the massive financial institutions, anonymity, etc.)?

It's not necessarily the case that someone would want to use Bitcoin for anonymity, it might just be a more convenient payment method or something else. Doesn't hurt to give people more places to spend their Bitcoin even if the circumstances are less than ideal.

In what way can Bitcoin be considered a meaningful alternative (however you define it) if you also have to input a valid credit card number (that, presumably, the merchant will run the traditional $1 verification charge on)?

The reality is that Bitcoin is less convenient than using a regular credit card (because, realistically, you're not going to be mining Bitcoin but rather you'll be buying Bitcoin using your regular credit card/bank account). I would argue that Bitcoin is also worse in every way (no chargebacks, wild fluctuations in the valuation of a unit of Bitcoin, etc.) if you also don't care about anonymity and the product you're buying is fully legal.

CC serves as verification. Bitcoin has less fees.

So it's like "providing an ID", and then paying. Even if bitcoin is not "anonymous" (pseudonymous), there's still the decentralised+cheap nature of it that's worthwhile.

Fees argument doesn't really hold water because authorizations costs money too, even if subsequently voided.

Sad to see it go - I've used it to pay for humble bundles a couple of times.

Yeh they lost a customer there, anyways can buy from Steam now direct with bitcoin most of time there are great offers there too.

edit: oh look downvoted for speaking my mind, go HN groupjerk

Ok, I think I understand - that you mean some more general money laundering of bitcoin? where source of the money need not be known, because behavior shows that it just has to be money laundering. Tx!

How exactly does the laundering happen in this scheme? Isn't the money just being sent to Humble, never to return to the person who sent it?

The keys get sold on sketchy scam websites like G2A

shouldn't/couldn't the publisher who own the key then just deactivate the key if the source of the money is found to be a laundered source?

I imagine they'd rather avoid the whole mess entirely

Sender gets game keys from Humble and resells the keys for profit.

The flow of money doesn't terminate at Humble.

Wouldn't Humble need to be in on the laundering then? Or are the launderers able to be in cahoots with the publisher of games?

Typically "bad actors" in this situation are bad in regards to the company, it's not a definition of their person or the source of their money (although those often coincide).

I'd guess that they track keys which appear on reseller sites. So the "bad actor" comes from later use, not from e.g. stolen Bitcoins.

ahhhh ... it's because of the "name your own price" model and offering of steam keys.

You want to limit to one super-cheap steam-key per person. So that's more of a "promotion" than a classic exchange. Corner case ;)

"Name your own price" and "Humble" in the name are just marketing gimmicks. It's just a business like any other - they want you to be generous, pay more than other people. If you take "name your own price" honestly, they try to block you. Under $1? "Sorry, minimal name your own price is $1." Paying under average price? "Sorry, please try our captcha roulette or increase your 'name your price'". I can't believe they don't require scan of passport and utility bills to "assure better quality of service".

The bitcoin die-hards will lynch me for saying this, but: I think this is a good example of where using a side-agreement (sortof a sidechain, I guess?) would be a good thing.

So: don't accept bitcoin payments, accept coinbase payments, but only one per coinbase account.

I'd be happy to verify my phone number if it meant I could buy anything with Bitcoin afterwards. There are other payment solutions that work, too, I just really really like the UX of Bitcoin and the fact that it's pretty much cash. I don't need permission from my bank to transact.

Have you used websites that detect proxy & bad ips like getipintel.net? I'm curious if there's a correlation between abuse and proxy ips.