Bitcoin Forum

Would you walk up to a machine and insert money if it spit out a bitcoin address (private key) with a predetermined amount of BTC on it?

Sure, if it's cheap

Absolutely!  I think this is the BEST way to entice new bitcoin users to try it out....  if it is readily available, cheap, and easy to use, I think a lot of people will use it simply for the novelty of it

The potential to get scammed is huge though. What do you do if someone has already stolen all the private keys and put the packets back? It's untraceable and somewhat anonymous after all. I suppose you can in some situations scan the address and check the balance before buying.

People may get confused and think that a physical gold coloured coin is a Bitcoin. Why do they give those away anyway, for novelty value? Perhaps the private key is inside the coin. Again I would worry that someone would give me one of these coins with an empty address in it.

BTC Vending machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2K6nNj_LEE

If the machine and operator is trusted sure, I buy my BTC for cash all the time through trusted sources and an "ATM" would eliminate the need to arrange a meeting to hand over cash :)

I heard there was a bitcoin suitcase atm that sold btc at a convention somewhere :)

Why would you trust them to not keep the private keys after selling it?

If the ATM's are small(There is few youtube videos about it) it would be so good for Non-EU or Non-US countries, easier to get with the ATM.

The issue with those services, is that the company would have to keep buying BTC. this means that when they run out, the ATM wouldn't work. Personally, I feel that this service would die out in a short life span. Many internet services dried up for that reason, and I would expect this one to do the same, unless it was run extremely well.

You need a starting investment, but with the benefit, you can then run it quite easily.
You don't even need to buy btc in advance. You can have a partnership with mt.gox or some other exchanges and buy it at the current price whenever someone wants to withdraw btc :)

Yes, I think that it would be nice.
Especially if it's cheap.

sure, why the hell not? be a lot quicker too

There won't be an ATM in every small town. But yes, it would be nice :)

It would be great if the you can sell and buy bitcoins with it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283185.0 - Discussion about a ATM in San Francisco.

Having a ATM though, would be a really good idea. If you can go into more detail on how the process would work then that would be great also.

Assuming they don't know it has been sold, just transfer the balance immediately and then it's useless to them. After all you should be able to check the balance before sale. But I don't think many people will be as clued up as us, especially the people who would need to use an ATM / Vending machine. They might think, yey I have some Bitcoins and then just put it in a draw for later!

It seems unlikely to me that someone who would spend $20,000 to build a place a kiosk that sells bitcoin would be trying to rip off the users.  How would the ATM owner ever recover the $20,000 if the first user gets ripped off and reports that experience to the bitcoin forum?

That's a good point. Where would you be aiming to place these atm?

If the price was right and I received them quickly I would.

I live in Colorado so I'm hoping to place the first one in Denver.  My partner has extensive experience in programming ATM machines for large banks and he is confident we can build a prototype machine.

The only problem placing one in another city/state is finding a sponsor to manage it.  Initially it would only sell bitcoin (not buy it) so periodically cash would need to be unloaded from the machine.  We want to develop the first machine and then license the technology to others who want to place ATM machines in their home towns.

Sound like a good idea.  What is the timeframe on this?

@CoinATM -- awesome.... the $20,000 RoboCoin (or whatever it is) is just too expensive...if your solution is much cheaper, I am interested.  Let me know when you are able to expand to the Baltimore/DC area....I know of quite a few people here who could help me manage an army of these things

I'm happy to have a conversation if you, or anybody else, who wants to employ "an army of these".

Here's one of the machines we are considering:
http://www.ncr.com/products/banking/deposit-atm-machines/selfserv-36

Here's my post in the lending forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=286631.0

The NCR machines run about $30-$50,000 USD.  (OUCH).

Absolutely! Great idea. Shame the banks would never support it!

This would be very vulnerable to skimmers who can just snipe the BTC address with mini cameras.

We don't need no stinkin banks!




Not if we use EMV like our European friends.  

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Yah, The fees will probably be pretty high.

Yes, as long as the price was reasonable.

Your price point needs to be $3-7K to be competitive in the ATM market.

No merchant or investor is going to risk more than that on hardware that has so many variables.



Focus on being the first AFFORDABLE ATM, not the first ATM released to the public.

Any possibility of also being able to sell bitcoins? It would be nice to just walk up to the atm, transfer some BTC via whatever method and pull out the local currency.

I think if people feel BTC is easily convertible in both directions, then they will be a lot more comfortable picking some up. Having to do bank transfers and the like right now is really inconvenient vs walking up to a 24hr atm.

I know I can totally trust my USD Dollars to a guy who uses the term ATM Machine. It shows he is very knowledgeable in his area and most likely also has a Ph.D. Doctor.

access to an btc atm would be great

Definitely!
I hope that in future will be more and more ATMs
It's an easy way to convert money and shows the seriousness of the BTC project

Another solution might be that you input your address in the ATM and it sends you the bitcoins.
Perhaps you can just type in the address, or send it from your smartphone using NFC, or the ATM shows you a QR code of their webpage with a unique id in the link, and you send them the address over the internet (or with their custom app).

Seems so expensive.  What goes into the cost on these?

Government agents will wait till the ATM is full of cash before confiscating it.

I say definitely no and I'm so surprised that almost everybody says yes. That's weird.

I'd prefer that the ATM have a built in QRcode reader.  Then I could scan in my bitcoin address, insert money, and the machine would send the bitcoins directly to my bitcoin receiving address.

It would depend, I'm sure it would be extremely convenient, this may sound daft but for the first time I've started regularly using my debit card in stores recently and I imagine if it's as convenient as that I probably would end up using it. However, I have some pretty big concerns when it comes to these kind of machines about security and privacy, what's to stop people from setting up phony ATMs to get information from you and things like that? I also think that the more overbearing governments out there are definitely going to have something to say about it then there's the way you might get people using the Bitcoin ATMs being targeted either by criminals looking for an easy score or government agent doing profiling on Bitcoin users.

Yep, all sorts of worries and this is just off the top of my head, to be honest, I think what will more likely happen is we use Bitcoin for global trade over the internet and then Silver/Gold for local trading, this would probably be the most efficient trading because Gold/Silver would be incredibly hard to transfer over long distances safely and I think Bitcoin is a perfectly viable alternative if you don't want to risk the Gold/Silver.

if i can spend those bitcoins ifrom ATM in lets say grocer's shop next to it, why not.

I dont see why someone wouldnt use an atm if its more convenient. Imagine you are out and about, say at a mall, and think: "Hum, Id like to buy some bitcoins with the cash in my pocket". You choice is now going to the bank or atm to deposit cash, and buy it online with your phone or computer. With an atm, you can just walk 100 feet, deposit cash, and receive bitcoins. So long as fees are low, I dont see why it wouldnt get used.

I also think that an ATM will seem legit to many new users, and draw new people in to using BTC. Think about all the stupid impulse buying people, and perhaps yourselves, do. I bet there are tons of people who think about buying $10-20 worth of BTC but would rather not deal with signing up for accounts and doing online payments with personal financial information (especially when cryptocoins are still seen by some as only used for illegal activities).

I absolutely will if ATM exists in my community.

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