After a week long hiatus, Humble Bundle Bitcoin payments have quietly returned. Things are not back to exactly as they were before, a $2.50 minimum order has been added for Bitcoin purchases due to what Humble Bundle called “recent abuse.”
We have resolved issues with our bitcoin payment processor. Bitcoin payments are once again active site wide. Sorry for the inconvenience!
— Humble Support Ninja (@humblesupport) March 14, 2016
Humble Bundle Bitcoin payments have been a great assets for Bitcoin using gamers. With Steam still not accepting Bitcoin despite continuing rumors, it has been a great way to support charity and buy games with bitcoin in a name your own price fashion. Because of that, I made it #1 on my list for places to buy Steam games with bitcoin. It was also a good “exhibit A” example of how Bitcoin’s low transaction fees can enable microtransactions. That point was always a bit disingenuous because Humble Bundle uses a payment processor, is itself a middle man, and didn’t pass on Bitcoin to developers or charities, but it was an easy example to point to on how Bitcoin could potentially be used.
That reputation is going to take a small hit. While $1 is still the minimum payment for the base level of any package when using credit cards or Paypal, Bitcoin payments are now regulated to a minimum $2.50 order. That is still a pretty good deal for what Humble Bundle usually offers and it is hard to feel bad when you get to choose how that money is divvied out between developers, charity and humble bundle itself. That said, it will be difficult to point to the Humble Bundle as an example of how Bitcoin can enable microtransactions, while Paypal and Credit Cards are empirically doing a better job of that for this particular service.
Humble Bundles’ Twitter mentioned an issue with their payment processor which was later spun into an article by the Merkle. It was never confirmed that the problem was on Coinbase’s end, the original tweet simply stated that there was an issue, but didn’t clarify what that issue was. It could have been spam transactions or something related to blocks being full or a myriad of other issues.
We still don’t know what the cause of the issue was or if Humble Bundle is happy with Coinbase as a provider. It is worth pointing out that they are still using Coinbase as their payment processor.
We have sent emails to Humble Bundle asking for clarification and will update this space if we receive a reply.