I think what you actually buy when you use a Bitcoin ATM is anonymity (although, sadly, that's likely to change in the near future). For some, it's worth the high premium. And for a HoDLer who has had a 1,000+% investment value appreciation, why would he/she care if the ATM charges a 10% premium while giving you full anonymity? It's like comparing a BTC price of $100,000 vs. $90,000. No biggie.
I’ve been looking & I don’t think there are any totally anonymous bitcoin ATM’s in the UK. They all require some form of KYC.
I totally agree that if you can find a 100% anon one then the 10% fee, whatever, it’s better than the capital gains tax most of us pay.
Merely putting in a phone number could be considered sufficiently anonymous, no? I think that would be for authentication of transaction purposes, and sure technically, they might not even need to do that level of identification... because if you are buying BTC, you would give cash, so should be pretty immediate to receive the BTC, but if you are selling BTC, there may well need to be a couple of confirmations minimum that venders are going to prefer. I remember when I used to buy BTC with strangers, I tended to be o.k. with one confirmation.. but I would NOT give over any cash without at least one, and I never felt any necessity to have to receive more than one - but I suppose if there is some kind of contention going on such as in August 2017 with the hard fork issues.. or maybe if there might be some other possible attack that might be attempted--- for example if there were an actual 51% attack that might be going on through Chinese miners, then maybe a few confirmations would be the better practice in those kinds of circumstances.
At some point, competition should bring down those fees - even 5% to 10% seems excessive, absent some kind of great market volatility.... Would be nice if there were some systems like local bitcoins or even ways that buyers/sellers can get directly in contact with each other to do in person transactions in cash.. but when I used to use local bitcoins, my lowest fee would usually be 5%, and there were times that I had gotten up to 12% when it seemed that many of the other buyer/sellers disappeared in 2017/2018 for a few months... and then I had to disappear after a while too because I was like one of the only ones left in my area.. and I just felt like it was too risky for me to be dealing with so many seeming crazies (during that time).. and I could not really bring myself to charge more than 12% or so (maybe I did a wee bit higher on one or two transactions, but it was not comfortable for me)... so I just stopped dealing with strangers (and only did buy/sells with prior customers) and continued transacting with strangers after the market settled down.. maybe it was about a 6 week break in December 2017/January 2018.. maybe also partly my concerns of the ongoing spam attack at that time too.. and then fees were so high on the network as well and I had already had some transactions that were stuck for a decently long time too during that time.
since becoming a BTC hodler my sleep has not been good, maybe I'm still in the process of becoming a strong hand
Perhaps.. Even becoming a strong hand or otherwise not doing really stupid shit that causes you to devolve into fantasy land is not a given.. There are some members who seemed to have been developing strong hand techniques and then they just panic or go into some other la la land dumb shit, so for sure no real guarantees.
I am also kind of thinking that it takes years to become a strong hand.. perhaps at least a full cycle, and maybe even a couple of cycles depending on your circumstances, of course.