Bitcoin Forum

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113424/austria-gets-600-merchants-selling-bitcoin-overnight

Finally, something happened in Austria, I can be proud of.
Do give some background. Trafiken are the only shop, where you can buy tobacco ware(of course there are also vending machines for that) and lottery scratch ticket. There are some really fucked up laws about that in Austria. So, in Austria there is always a Trafik near you, so you can feed your lung cancer, now that also goes for Bitcoin.

Well..great news that more n more ppl r adopting BTC..the awareness will also increase now as merchants accept BTC..

That is a bigger problem in Austria. There are not much merchants, which accept Bitcoin. That's why a always was a little bit ashamed of Austrian economy, which is pretty slow on using new technologies.

Excellent residing in Austria will be more enjoyable now. Back in Wien half a year ago I could only find a few Bitcoin ATMs.

A few?
I just know of 2 BTC ATMs. One in Vienna, one in Graz ;)

This is great for Austrian bitcoiners. Now to see this happen worldwide  :P

600 outlets (with an option to expand to 1200), that's pretty impressive.

https://coinfinity.co/bitcoinbon-en/

So basically you're not buying bitcoins directly, you're buying voucher you can redeem for BTC at bitcoinbon.at. That's actually a good idea and could drive more sales than standard BTC ATM.

600 Läden und "an jeder ecke" ist doch etwas anderes. aber trotzdem nicht schlecht  :)

Österreich ist nicht so groß ;)
Die Karte hier, ist doch recht beeindruckend:
https://www.bitcoinbon.at/outlets/

I'm going to try and find one in Wien today. I'll definitely post some pictures afterwards.
This is quite exciting.  :)

I expressed myself wrongly. I couldn't find a few that's the issue. The only one that I encountered (after a lot of searching), was this one:
http://coinatmradar.com/bitcoin_atm/171/bitcoin-atm-lamassu-wien-sektor5-coworking-spaces-wien/

Now the Bitcoinbons are everywhere.

Austria is about 1% the size am USA, so it would be like having 60,000 bitcoin outlets in America.
I think that classifies as "an jeder ecke" oder? nicht buchstäblich aber...

I think the same thing is already available in the UK, but the bitcoin economy is still pretty small there, I hope it helps the Austrian's BTC economy more.

WOW this is really great news!
My country, Croatia, is very near to Austria, so I may come to visit you and buy some BTC :)
I hope something like this happen also soon in my country.
Recently, we got first bitcoin ATM in Zagreb, so at least, this is some good start for bitcoin community in our country.

Wow, in a country like that I would have never expected a concept of Bitcoin to take off to the point where you can purchase BTC that easily. The US should follow. Vancouver, I believe, has a Bitcoin ATM, and in the US I think one exists as well. Not as easy, clearly.

That's some amazing news, i didn't think that we could see so mass adoption in any europe country sooner than in some countires of US.
Seems like it's time to visit my friend who works there or ask him about these atms first and tell him to test them ;D.
Positive news indeed!!!

It's not an ATM, it is a Bon you buy and redeem online.

Yep i asked him about that and he told me the same so i went throught the whole article and yep you have corrected me thank you...

We need this in Denmark so badly!

There is no news about BTC here and not many are interested in using it :(

Well,
whole europe would need some kind of big campaign or happening about bitcoin as my home country and our neighbour countries don't  have many knowledge about what bitcoin is.
Maybe make some movie about it and push it to tv's or some conferrence.
It needs more promotion, i don't know single company that works with bitcoin.

This is how the Bitcoinbon looks. More information soon!

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::)

Nice! Now we need more merchants accepting Bitcoin in Austria.

We need idea and concepts like this brought into other smaller countries to boost the adoption of bitcoin. Smaller countries would adapt to it much faster than larger countries.

South Africa could do with something like this.

This sort of thing seems to be popping up in a few countries (UK with zip-zap) and some other countries in Europe (think Poland). Sadly, I don't think many people tend to use these sorts of services as there just doesn't seem to be enough demand for bitcoin at the moment. Maybe that will change in the future, though.


So you're not actually buying the coins directly? You just buy a pin to collect them? How do you get them into your wallet from there? I think printing a QR code or the private key would be a better idea.

Actually this is an excellent idea. You obviously don't know German as everything is written on the "bon" (paper) that you receive.
I'll write a in a more detailed manner on how I got it, how to use it and describe the experience.

You redeem here with the code: https://www.bitcoinbon.at/#redeem

Nice news ! Hope this will spread quickly and be world wide!
Yeah like you said in smaller countries it will adapt quickly than larger countries !

In my 'small country', there are very few merchants who accept bitcoin. There are traders though of course but are still too little in numbers. To be honest, I think I'm pretty much one of the hundreds of people who use bitcoin or at least know about it here. Would sure wish this changes soon...

We could propose Bitcoin ATMs to be included with Regular ATMs at large/major shopping malls as well. We could create a small ecosystem using Bitcoin. With local stores we can talk to the manager/proprietor to start thinking about introducing Bitcoin to it's customers.

I live in a small town in Austria (~10,000 residents) - went to a tobacco store today.

They are advertising bitcoinbon on TV screens, just like in this picture (https://i.imgur.com/iPgbxHg.jpg) someone posted to reddit.

That is really cool.  Do you get the exchange rate at the time you buy the coupon, or when it is redeemed?
I don't really understand how it works, but it is a very nice and easy way to buy bitcoins.

Do you need to show any ID when buying the coupon? 

That is so great man. In Germany we are way behind. Hope this will change in the future.

You get the exchange rate at the time you redeem it (you could just buy one and redeem it when the rate is lower), I already have my bitcoins so I didn't buy one, but I'll give it a try if I need more.


If you buy a significant amount the store owner may ask for ID - just like when you buy prepaid credit cards, paysafecards, etc.

They are only required to check your identity if you buy more than €15000, however they may ask you to provide ID for lower amounts if you're acting suspicious.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I'm just referencing the money laundering rules of Austria (https://english.bmf.gv.at/financial-sector/Money-Laundering-and-Terrorist-Financing.html)


That's just a single company - it should be possible to do that in Germany.

Note: A picture of the Bon can be found on the first page. It is very large so I've decided not to post it again.
Here's my story. Firstly I went to https://www.bitcoinbon.at/#buy and looked at places where I could buy the bon. There were quite some places in Wien and it looked like this:

https://i.imgur.com/1p5ICuJ.png

I've picked out a location and went out to find it using Google Maps. The search was relatively easy, the locations are 1-3 meters off (pretty accurate). So when I finally found the "Tabak Trafik", unfortunately there was no indication like a sticker or something that one could buy Bitcoinbons there. That's a small minus I guess since there are a lot of these 'Trafiks'.
I proceeded to enter it and ask if I could buy a Bitcoinbon. They are available at 25€, 50€, 100€. I took one and paid 25€. Note: I was not asked for my ID.

Redeeming
To redeem the code one has to visit: https://www.bitcoinbon.at/#redeem. There you will be asked if you have a Bitcoin wallet (in my case I obviously do). To proceed you have to click on the 'Ja' button and enter the code.
https://i.imgur.com/vnMSBO1.png

When redeeming, you will be shown how much Bitcoins you will get (rate updates every 90 seconds), and asked to input: Name, Email Address and Bitcoin Address.


For 25€, at the current rate of 1BTC = 263,87€, I've received 0,0947 Bitcoins.
https://blockchain.info/tx/995e682c80bb231880beecba9e2c5f094ac8a5d0749d67aa270400ec39b6927d

Update:
It looks like there is an error on the website. While it displays the price in Euros it actually is in dollars. I was supposed to get 0.10368663594 (actual market rate where 25€ = 27$), and I got 0,0947. That's 9.4% off, but! If you personally ask me this is a great rate for something that's so new. They have to pay a lot of fees, pay for all the paper and such. I'm sure that over time this will reduce. The amount of received Bitcoins is calculated at the time of redemption not at the time of purchase.

The Bon is valid for 12 months, meaning that the risk is on the company. They stated on the voucher 'Gultigkeit: 12', which obviously was not very clear to me (hours, days, weeks, months etc.?).

this is a great news for the people of Austria i will love to see some day these progres in my country yeah hope so only maybe after i am dead  ;D

So this is really a simple and easy way to use and to buy some quick Bitcoin. Awesome!

I've updated the post and added more information. The overall experience from 1-5 would be around 4.6.
The thing is that this could be pretty much easily implemented in other countries. Buying and redeeming can be done in less than a minute (if you have internet on your smartphone). This is much better than ATMs (that require a lot of verification). They should only add a Bitcoin sticker of sorts to the places that hold these.

If anyone has any questions in regards to Bitcoinbons please ask. I'm hoping that I've explained everything clearly.


Note: I've received the coins already (in less than 30 minutes).

Wow thats nice wow great for Austrian guys who mess with bitcoins , wish to live there

That is awesome! Wow so much place that accept bitcoin! Which canada will do the same!

Nice!Hope BTC can be accepted in more countries.

Well I for one think that this thread needs much much more attention. As I've previously stated multiple times around the forum, people focus too much on the bad news that the media is spreading and just acknowledge the good ones. There are many factors that should be accounted for. Even though people often think Austria is small and thus not that much important as Germany or the UK. Austria is a very good country.
Wien has been chosen 6 times in a row as the most livable city:
http://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city

I've been there, and that's where the Bitcoins came from. Moving there would actually make sense. Although I'm not completely certain of the governments stance towards Bitcoin.
Bitlegal.net doesn't seem to be working and I couldn't find much information aside from it being legal as stated here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country

LaudaM, thanks a lot for posting your detailed review – very much appreciated! We are running the Bitcoinbon service, here's our verification: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999273.msg10848743#msg10848743

We already sent out stickers to our partner outlets but not all have them in place yet. Here's how this looks like in an outlet near our office: https://i.imgur.com/JlFqZHN.jpg
We hope that all outlets will eventually use the sticker.

Actually, that's not an error. Our bitcoin price is denominated in Euro and it's higher than marktet prices at the various exchanges. This is because we have to pay the outlet owner and the company running the POS terminals (in addition to our own fee). Since we don't like hidden fees, we included the overall fee (currently ~8%) in the bitcoin price itself. We think that's the most transparent way as it makes it very easy to compare our price with other prices.

You're right, that's not clear enough. We'll change this accordingly.

Usually, we send bitcoins within only a couple of seconds.

If there are any more questions, feel free to ask them here, we'll be happy to give answers.

It's nice to see that you're participating on the forum. I'm glad that you're addressing everything. Aside from what I've written here, the service is flawless. However I do have a question: why do you require a name and email address when one submits the bon?

Similar to Libertyx.com for the US ?

Yup it's going great in austria, got a friend there and he asked me if i knew what bitcoin was. If I was an early investor I would live there and live off BTC only.

...

turvaya

Thank you for bringing this wonderful development to our attention!

coinfinity

Congratulations on taking an important step in making Bitcoin available.  That is a wonderful thing, I hope that you have every success.  I do not anticipate going to Austria anytime soon, but when I do, I will visit a location or two...

LaudaM

Fantastic reporting, very well done.  Thank you for your work in letting us know of this great development in Austria as well as some details and pictures.

Well let's say that we're lucky that a certain someone told me about Bitcoinbons on time. I've bought Bitcoin online in the past, but this experience felt quite different. I guess I was really excited to see how these would work. Somehow I though, that the community and coinfinity deserved a review. We need to keep spreading the word as much as we can.
I'd definitely like to hear more from the company, I could assist more.

A little higher fee compared to the Bitcoin ATM fees outweighs the fact that you can buy bitcoins virtually everywhere. 8)

We wanna be able to get in touch with a customer just in case of a problem, that's why we ask for an email address. Asking for a customer's name is primarily for AML reasons, that was recommended by our lawyer.


It's a similar concept, but our users don't need to create an account at our website.