ATM are expensive. 0.000000000000000000000000001% of population uses bitcoins.
ATM are regional. Nobody drives 280 miles to go to any ATM. They service a very small area (i.e. people within 5 miles). Bitcoin adoption is so low that there aren't that many users in a 5 mile radius. Are you going to spend $100K to build, setup, and service a machine for the 12 bitcoin users in the 5 mile radius?
Topic: Bitcoin ATMs -- who are the players? - page 4. (Read 8755 times)
Mt. Gox and Tradehill might be big fish in the Bitcoin world, but it's a small pond in here. Developing and deploying ATMs is pretty expensive, and I don't think Bitcoin has any backers large enough for this at the moment. If anything, they'd have to partner with CoinStar or a similar customizable kiosk device that deals in vouchers instead of cash at first.
Bitcoin ATMs are the killer app for bitcoin. Everything about ATMs make sense. You can spend the next 100 years convincing thousands of businesses to accept bitcoin or you can spend 1 week and put an ATM in a city and now every merchant indirectly accepts bitcoin. It indirectly opens up bitcoin to people who won't be accepting bitcoin in this decade no matter what (poor taxi drivers, poor street vendors, etc). It also will make using bitcoin realistic for immigrants in developed countries who send money back home.
Bang for the buck, nothing beats an ATM in driving adoption and making bitcoins useful. So, why aren't the big players (mtgox, tradehill, etc) or existing ATM franchise owners getting behind bitcoin ATMs? I know about Todd Bethell, but his Web site pretty much seems dead. It seems like a lot more interest would be around ATMs instead of yet another exchange site, another classified listing site, etc.
What am I missing about ATMs? Is there anything besides Todd investigating this?
Bang for the buck, nothing beats an ATM in driving adoption and making bitcoins useful. So, why aren't the big players (mtgox, tradehill, etc) or existing ATM franchise owners getting behind bitcoin ATMs? I know about Todd Bethell, but his Web site pretty much seems dead. It seems like a lot more interest would be around ATMs instead of yet another exchange site, another classified listing site, etc.
What am I missing about ATMs? Is there anything besides Todd investigating this?
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