Topic: Does Bitcoin really need an ATM? - page 8. (Read 6255 times)

As well as my country there are also cities that use bitcoin atm service because the city invites many foreign tourists to enjoy its natural beauty so with the Atm bitcoin in order to facilitate the foreign tourists to make various transactions either to rent lodging or to eat restaurant,  So with the bitcoin Atm service it's a lot easier for people who use bitcoin as a means of transaction anywhere.

I agree with the idea that bitcoin has its own ATM. It would surely be helpful to all of us. It will also be good if bitcoin will have its own card that we can use to withdraw bitcoin. In our country, there is a single bitcoin ATM machine that exist but it can only be used for buying and selling. I used Paypal card to withdraw converted bitcoin into cash and sometimes I encounter problem in withdrawing. Having an own ATM machine that enables us to withdraw bitcoin directly into converted cash with its own card and without waiting for days of processing will be very helpful.

I just wish that bitcoin will be used by other countries in the future.

I don't personally think that bitcoin ATMs are something needed. Maybe in the future when bitcoin is wider spread than it is today.

It is not like that, paying salary by Bitcoin í just a way for the payers send money to employees, because they accept Bitcoin á their payment method so that they take Bitcoin, not because their bosses give Bitcoin so that they HAVE TO take Bitcoin ass their salaries

Wow, I was thinking how to best convey this and you did it so succinctly. Well done!

I agree physical manifestations of currency is old school, we barely need cash anymore what's the point of an atm

What would happen in future if people waanted to rob you, would they take ur bitcoin? You can say you don't remember ur private key

Street robbing might disappear but criminals would get more sophisticated and steal hardware wallets

*bump*

This is a question for anyone who has actually used a bitcoin atm for btc TO cash conversion.   I see some listed on Coinradar but am curious as to how long it actually takes.   Many notes online say that some kind of ID verification before cash withdrawals can be made?    Would appreciate a first hand field report about how this actually works and how long it takes.   

While on that topic, does anyone know of any real world casinos (anywhere in the world, but preferably not in the US) that accept btc?   As in, the casino allows deposits to one's casino account IN bitcoin (allowing for as many confirmations as they require of course) and then allowing conversion to chips and or cash?   

I like this thread. OP makes some valid points, the kind of criticism often lacking in this forum. I can speak for myself - right now I do use btc regularly, for international money transfers, because it works better than other options. I don't need an ATM to do that. I also use BTC as store of value, even though I realize it's risky at this early stage. Again, no need for ATM.

Even if some day in some places BTC becomes widely adopted, most likely it will be adopted as an additional, not exclusive payment option. Again, no need for ATM/exchange machines.

The machine above is a close cousin of this machine, which regularly does contain fiat money 24/7 and has been built with a commensurate level of security.  You might find it at your local carwash which is unattended 24/7.



Besides, it'd be more of a novelty.  Something to display at a tradeshow.  I don't really own any public-facing property where bolting it into a fixed location would make any sort of sense.

Also, such a thing probably wouldn't actually sell Casascius Coins.  Rather, it would make far more sense to sell redemption "tokens" that they must redeem for BTC online, where they would receive the exchange rate at the time of redemption, rather than at the time of purchase.  This way, the machine doesn't need connectivity to the Internet, nor would it need any major magic to deal with oddities in the denomination (e.g. not being able to sell less than 1 BTC, a problem when BTC>$20, or requiring exact change)

Essentially they would be buying a "Casascius Mickey Mouse Dollar" which could be used to buy bitcoins at a later time.  The secret key could be much shorter (since it's merely a website redemption code not a full private key) and no holograms would be needed (dropping the price greatly, and also dropping the production difficulty, since I could bulk-laser-etch codes on coins in mass quantities and produce thousands per hour, singlehandedly).

All of these caveats would be admittedly less cool than vending real Casascius Coins out of a machine, but it would eliminate most of the costly complication, keep the markup as razor thin as possible, and importantly, would represent a setup where anyone could repeat it simply by ordering a machine, stocking it full of easily-acquired tokens, and then running some open source redemption software on their web server to enable redemptions.

All that said, each coin could still have a QR private key in addition to the redemption code, which would be funded upon redemption (as the way of delivering BTC to the customer), so they still end up with a real physical "bitcoin" in the end.

Maybe the term ATM is a bit confusing. With ATM I refer to a machine where you can buy Bitcoins.


I love this example! Or like saying "Hey, why would an Australian care about the information of a server in Europe?"

I don't have any trouble getting dollars for my coins, but I would prefer local cash via atm if it gave me close to the market rate.

Like nearly every bitcoin innovation ATMs will proliferate when there is enough demand to make it profitable for someone and then it will increase the usefulness and thus the demand for bitcoins which will push some other imagined bitcoin projects into existence.

I don't expect many regular merchants in physical stores to be accepting bitcoin any time soon. The ones who do are in it for what you call empty rhetoric. Which also happens to be why I work for bitcoin, transact with bitcoin and save in bitcoin.

Thanks for your replies. I find your comments very insightful, but I fear I have accidentally changed the original subject (the usefulness of building an ATM Bitcoin dispenser).

So, I agree with you that there are inconvenients (more or less frequent, depending on the person, I accept that) with traditional banking that Bitcoin aims to address (and I really hope it will). But I am still not sure of the answer to the following question:

- Will people use a Bitcoin ATM, other than tech-savvy people? (if placed properly?)

- What will be the reasons that will lead a 'common' person, not particularly tech-savvy (the so called "average Joe") to change some EUR into BTC, _today_? Maybe publish a list of sites accepting Bitcoin in the ATM? And what would be the different than paying with euros in another site?

- What would be the slogan for those people, and not empthy retoric as "Freedom for the people", or "Forget the banks" etc. Something like "Your money more secure", "Easier to use money", "More powerful money", "More stable money", but true (at this time).

- I think that the deployment of ATMs should be complemented by some physical merchants (affiliates) accepting it in the neighbourhood. In this way people will see the sign "Accepting Bitcoins", and when find the ATM for the first time, they will wonder what's all this about. But, how to convince merchants to use Bitcoin, if they need to pay taxes in euros? Their reaction would be the same as if I proposed to accept Swiss francs (and I think they would probably accept Swiss francs rather than Bitcoins).

Paying 3% still leaves the merchant with the risk of chargeback. No one else is even selling riskless payment to merchants online.

It's very likely that when both ways are widely available different situations will use different methods. Right now everything is being crammed into one setup - customer can yank back money and merchant has to collect info and still take risk.

Doesn't it seem a little bit odd that the best on offer for online payments is to hand over the exact info that someone would need to charge your card? It's a really bad system, but paying online is so valuable that we do it even though it costs billions paid to thieves.

Average Joe doesn't do it because it's been stupidly hard until Bitcoin. I recently paid a guy in AUS for a consult. It was only incidental that I even knew where he was.

This is like saying "Airplanes. pffft, how many people actually need to cross the ocean?". Uh, a lot more once there is a reasonable way to do it.

Bitcoin opens so so many possibilities.

No. Bitcoin solves one (very general) trust related problem. You don't have to trust or even know who is paying you. That's all.

I'm in a so called 'developed democratic country' and often find myself needing to violate laws. Beyond conscious violation I couldn't tell you how many laws and regulations there are (federal, state, or the county/city I happen to be in) let alone what they are and what the penalties are for violating them or which ones are actually enforced and which are forgotten (or which of the forgotten will be remembered again when convenient). On top of that I can't control or predict when the laws and enforcement will change.

Really? I guarantee that if you ask everyone you know if they've ever had some kind of serious problem with a bank or payment processor, you will hear some sad stories. If not, you obviously don't know very many people.

Not everybody has to store their bitcoins on their computer. Secure hardware wallets are under development to address precisely this concern. Or people can trust a third party service such as an e-wallet to handle their bitcoins, preferably with someone to sue if things go wrong.

Because I can, if the service is simply "I give you the money and you give me the goods". Many stores will actually offer a discount on big-ticket items if you pay in cash, simply because it avoids them having to pass the payment processing costs onto you, the consumer.

No, the point is that you don't have to trust anyone other than the person you're doing business with. You don't have to trust the bank not to freeze your account, you don't have to trust the payment processor not to reverse the transaction, you only have to trust that the person you're giving your money to will hold up their end of the bargain, exactly as if you had used cash. And really, isn't that the way it should be?

Who is going to protect it ? 24/7 ?
Who is going to fill it up ?
WHo is going to pay for all that ?

Most vending machines get attacked and vanadalised regularly ,and they only have
candy and drinks in them 

if there is going to be one that contains virtual and fiat money its going to be a target for theives ,this goes double if/when bitcoins are more valuable in the future

Again, I don't see how it solves the main problem (that Bitcoin is a solution begging for a problem*). I copy your post to comment inline each point:


1) If Joe plays poker, it's likely. It's happened to many players twice. NetTeller and FTP (complicated by Ponziness, but related to government for sure)

Well, so you are implying that Bitcoin is like a poker chip? Do we have to market poker players? And maybe casino players too? It is not something I can write in my ATM project: "Play poker with unregulated money", or "Visit X sites without embarrasing charges in your VISA" (though it might be a good marketing)

2. Six billion people live too far from me for me to hand them cash. Mail is not so good. Plus I don't likely have the brand of cash they want.

I don't think average Joe needs to send cash to people in the antipodes. Maybe once in his life, and he won't mind paying some fees. And people who do these transactions often are (again) not the people who would casually buy BTC in an ATM.

3. Millions if not billions of people break laws because laws are terrible around the world.

I completely agree. So I modify my question adding that "people in developed, democratic countries".

4. Obviously 3% doesn't stop much trade, but 3% is worth 3%.

My point is that when Bitcoin has good (developed) escrow services, transactions will also have a cost.

5. Merchants and their consumers are on the same team. If merchants get hit with fraud they either pass it on to the legit consumers or they go out of business.

Surely merchants prefer to pay a fee and "forget" fraud rather than deploying their own anti-fraud measures. And if a third party deploys this anti-fraud measures, merchant will need the pay them, thus charging more to their consumers.

6. Of course they can be stolen.

I agree.


P.S.: Concernign the answer from Foxpup, Bitcoin has some advantages in particular (rare) events. I cannot write in the ATM machine "Use Bitcoin and your bank account will not be frozen for completely arbitrary reasons". I don't know anyone (well, now _you_, but I cannot say I really know you ;-) ) whose bank account has been frozen and, while it's very inconvenient, detractors would argue that with Bitcoin people would say "All  my wealth has been stolen by a malware/antivirus_bug/moths/whathever and I can do *nothing* to recover it".
And why do you think that you can get the same (or better) service that the existing ones for less than a 3% fee?
You talk about __trust__ merchants... Isn't the whole point of Bitcoin not to trust anybody?


* Really, I'm not trolling at all. I am enthusiastic about the Bitcoin project, and I believe that it would be as revolutionary to the economy as the Internet has been to the information (I have carried out some projects involving Bitcoin). My point is that it won't solve everyday, common people in developed countries actual problems (or at least, _prioritary_ problems).
It sure has its market, but it's narrower that we'd like to think (myself included, since all this thoughts came when I was looking for reasons to convince people that Bitcoin would be useful for them, and thus deploying a network of low cost of Bitcoin ATMs).

I've had my bank account frozen once (for completely arbitrary reasons), and let me tell you, it is not a fun situation to be in if you need a large amount of cash in a hurry.

This is completely false. Bitcoins are taxable, and while it may be easy to hide your bitcoins from the taxman, hiding the things you're spending them on is less easy. That's how tax evaders are usually caught: people spending lots of money that (according to their tax return) they don't have.

But would he want his money to be tracked if there is not an investigation? Many stores already do this every time you use a credit/debit card to try to build a profile on you that they can sell to advertisers and who knows who else. Some people don't like that.

I consider a 3% fee too much, especially if I can get the same or better service with a reduced fee, and I think most consumers would agree.

It's also useful for in-person transactions or transactions with trusted merchants where you know you're not getting scammed, and where paying an extra fee for the ability to reverse a transaction that you know you're never going to reverse is a waste of money.

When traditional banking "recovers" your stolen money, where do you think the money comes from? It isn't usually recovered from the thief, instead it comes from all those extra fees you pay, that you wouldn't be paying with Bitcoin.

I'm going to assume you're serious.

1. If Joe plays poker, it's likely. It's happened to many players twice. NetTeller and FTP (complicated by Ponziness, but related to government for sure)

2. Six billion people live too far from me for me to hand them cash. Mail is not so good. Plus I don't likely have the brand of cash they want.

3. Millions if not billions of people break laws because laws are terrible around the world.

4. Obviously 3% doesn't stop much trade, but 3% is worth 3%.

5. Merchants and their consumers are on the same team. If merchants get hit with fraud they either pass it on to the legit consumers or they go out of business.

6. Of course they can be stolen.