Bitcoin Forum

Apart from the fact it would look suspicious walking up to a BTC ATM with a duffle bag full of $$$ - whats stopping these people converting their cash reserves to BTC?

AML, KYC, and daily limits ;)

Ive had the chance to interact wth a few different brands of these machines. a feature I have seen in all of them is the fact that you must associate a phone number with the transaction in order to complete it, basically a small know your customer check that is unavoidable. couple that with the fact that you are on camera, redundantly, as any sane store would have a camera on the atm, as well as the atm having a camera beaming directly into you face. Top all that off with the fact that the limits are typicially 500-1000 USD. That may seem like a lot for some, but trust me, you cant do any real criminal activity (the kind the gov cares about) with that little capital. maybe baby crimes, LOL. small terrorist plots, tiny scandals and lilliputian "licks"  ;D


if criminals were able to exploit this, the service wouldnt be available to do so. the government has infinite resources to adapt. and once you make one of these transaction, if you are sloppy, you have identified yourself and all the wallets you have access to on the blockchain.

This is how I get my bitcoins since I am not old enough to pass the KYC policies of almost every exchange.
The only downside is that ATM's have huge fees - The only ATM near me has an 8% spread (4% to buy and 4% to sell).
Also, most ATM's only have about $20 - $5,000 cash in them so you can only withdraw that much.

Then I convert the bitcoin to other currencies like Ethereum etc. on Cryptopia usually.

There are much easier ways to "wash" money, so why would you go through all those hurdles to try to avoid cameras and

CCTV in the places where these ATMs are installed. You also have to fake documents needed to pass all the KYC/AML

regulations. The last hurdle will be the daily limits.. so if you seriously want to "wash" big amounts, then you have to do this

for a army of people. Then you have to "mix" these coins and you have to hope these "mixer" services are legit and not just

a Honeypot for the authorities.  ???

they won't do it because there is no reason for them to do it. they don't gain anything, or any advantage an instead they lose a lot.

first there are fees that they have to pay to convert fiat to bitcoin specially when you use an ATM the fees are higher than usual ways.

second is the fact that bitcoin is traceable but cash that they are giving up is not!

and finally a criminal who wants to buy illegal stuff (like a gun for example) can not pay with bitcoin because other criminal sellers don't accept bitcoin in return for that stuff, they want cash which is not traceable...

Maybe one thing that might stop they to converte cash to btc is the verification needed in exchanges nowadays. Of course they can use a fake ID or passport but that can really be a thing would stop them from do such thing. Remembering that criminals have another methods to do that and one of it is receiving money directly with Bitcoin instead of receiving fiat money.

Maybe their holding because they still wants to wait until bitcoin gains a higher value.

We do not have any way to prevent this from happening because every transaction is secure and we can not know any information from the accounts in Bitcoin, that is its decentralization and That is a great advantage for people to make use of it. Also, the government can not tax anyone involved in Bitcoin

They absolutely can. There's nothing stopping them from doing so. But guess what, criminals don't even need to convert their money to Bitcoins to go about their business of doing crime. We have more criminals using fiat than cryptocurrency. But I guess I do understand why cryptocurrency might be their best choice. It would be much easier to hide the money. Try bidding a daffle  bag full of cash.

Yeah criminals wouldnt want or need to use bitcoin atms. It just doesnt make sense, there is only a small amount of available funds in these bitcoin atms. It would take forever to try to do anytbing that is considered criminal, as in laundering funds or whatnot.
Im sure you can find a local bitcoin broker in almost every city in the world to do larger transactions, instead of using a bitcoin atm.

Cash is the most common method, but a criminal certainly can pay for illegal goods with Bitcoin.  Most darknet market sellers accept payment in BTC.  Even though in most cases the criminal will know enough information about crime in their local area to pay for the drugs or guns with cash rather than converting it for a high fee, there may be cases in which there are inexperienced criminals looking for a means of searching for other criminals (via the Internet).

There may also be cases in which a criminal needs a way of sending money across the world rather than in their local area, and mailing huge amounts of cash across the world is somewhat more difficult than sending a BTC transaction.

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As for KYC, the last time I was at an ATM it was pretty much anonymous.  And daily limits become pretty much irrelevant if a user can stay anonymous, because the ATM doesn't know that it's the same user buying more BTC.

They have other ways of doing this without the daily limits of ATMs. If you are an early Bitcoin holder seeking to sell your coins (bulk amounts) for cash, you will eventually encounter these shady types. Maybe not the criminals directly, but some intermediary who gets their cash supply directly from the criminals.

What's to stop you from going around and biyng things with that money like jewellery and then just keeping that instead? It's the same thing. You could do both. It's just the technology that effects the method that is all.


Yes it would take forever to do that. Years and years so it won't make much difference u iess you buy from someone I guess.

Well a unique password for transaction could help secondly ATM machine have cctv camers

BTC ATMs have low limits. You need to have already the money in your bank account and this includes KYC, AML and other regulations. So I don't really think they can be used for lots of money.