One thing I will say right off the bat is that I think it is extremely cool that anyone in the proximity of a coinstar can go and scrounge up their change head to a walmart (assuming they already made their account and everything) throw the change in the bin and get a ticket voucher for redemption in bitcoin! I mean on a granular and microscopic level how much more incrememtelly can you buy BTC than that? While at the same time making it it the MOST accessible means for the average "no-coiner" to start out with their very first SATs.
Perhaps more so this is a better learning lesson for your children in new age money managment, account creation, and crypto in general. Perhaps starting maybe make them set up the account with your guidance, then have them check the couch cushions and cars and the whole house for coins get them their first BTC hardware wallet and redeem their coins to send them to their wallet (of course with a little allowance on top maybe to cover the fees lol). Just as an excercise alone I see this being a very educational opportunity right there.
Now lets get more into the technical side of things here. CoinStar and Coinme are two completely different entities that have been able to come together and partner up on this so seamlessly because CoinStar already had the infractrure of 30 thousand coin conversion machines globally with kiosks that had the ability (probably with some serious hardware upgrades) to install new software for them to be able to allow the use of this service.
Coinme started off as a regular Bitcoin ATM company that used a Genmega Satoshi One Machine and would deploy usually in gas stations or other high traffic areas, but that became very cumbersome and financially depleting so their IT team decided that it would be much easier to just implement new software on existing kiosks and find someone to partner up with because it would be much quicker and much more cost efficient to scale. I want to say Coinstar and Coinme have been partnered since 2019? Maybe 2018. Can't remember.
Once Coinme is fully deployed on all of Coinstar's machines Coinme should have the largest amount of "Bitcoin ATMs" I want to say across the entire globe. I'll check coinatmradar.com and coinmap.org for a more exact number on on which operator has the most amount of machines currently. But all in all you try managing 30k customer support machines for a not so seamless bitcoin sale for the coins lmao those customer service reps are probably at wits end! If they are getting huge fines for pumping shitcoins i'd say it was a failed money grab but hey at least they are testing some stuff out and shaking things up a bit. Of course their customer service team is going to be useless and they are going to try and have the upper hand on every transaction to maximize profit.
If only their transactions were locked in and real time and one single process, this is the difference between Coinme BTM and traditional Bitcoin ATMs. I would stand by my statement that I think its very cool that they have made this a reality and I think its a huge success on their end for being able to take probably super outdated machines and add Bitcoin to them and make them availible for the general public. At the time their partnership was annouced it was a very great day for the adoption and awareness of Bitcoin.
On another note I sure do love stopping by one of those CoinStar machines to check the reject bin and search for all kinds of coin treasures! Sometimes you might even get lucky and find yourself a silver coin, heck it is possible to even find a gold coin in one!!!!
It would be cool, if both companies weren’t a rip off, and if CoinMe weren’t a bunch of scamming scumbags. They are no different than big banks, PayPal, Coinbase, phone and internet providers and on and on that are operating a corrupt system nearly unchecked. I’ll never forgot when Coinbase had its IPO, not Fuckn once did any news outlet mention the insane amount of customer fraud complaints. I of course knew they were scammers and they’ve scammed a multitude of my friends over the years. Not to mention nearly zero customer support within any reasonable time manner. I don’t think they even have phone support still, despite being worth billions. Same thing with CoinMe. They say they have customer phone support, but it appears to be a facad. I read countless complaints on multiple outlets and it’s clear they are operating a shady and corrupt business.
While I agree the idea of BTC ATMs is nice, I could never suggest using one. No different than using Coinstar..absolute rip-off. (Let me ask you, do most BTC ATMs force you to download their app and force you to send coins to their provided addresses?)
Moral of the story is the U.S. government is utterly corrupted, the SEC is a joke and doesn’t properly do their jobs (I’ve known this for the nearly 20 years of being an advisor). It sickens me these companies aren’t held accountable to any sort of real degree.