Here is a distribution of top 10 location types out of all bitcoin ATMs worlwide now:

Place type	% of all BTM locations
Supermarket/food store/Deli	14%
Restaurant/Pizzeria	13%
Cafe/Coffee Shop/Gelateria	7%
Shopping Mall	7%
Cigar Tobacco Shop	6%
BTC Embassy/company office	5%
Computer/Mobile/Electronics/Games	5%
Bar/Pub	5%
Hackerspace/workspace	4%
Forex/Money Services	4%

Hope it helps.

It might not show the fee, but it always shows you the price of bitcoin you purchase at. I don't know a single machine, which doesn't do this.
Which type of machine are you talking about?

Hey, I'm running coinatmradar.com bitcoin ATM map.

Can you find this machine on the map and check what the fees are listed now? I think for many BitAccess machines the fees are available

If you don't want to share the machine publicly - send me a pm, I will try to help you and contact operator as well to find out details and try to solve it for you.

I think in your case it was a very simple situation, when owner of the location didn't have the latest updated info, also operator can change fees remotely at any time, so it could be 1% one day and then it could be changed.
However, I think 20% is something strange for the sell bitcoin fee, usually it is lower than buy fee (average sell fee is at 5% now, you can check it on stats page on my site). Maybe in this particular case the operator was low on cash and that's why raised the rate.

Also BitAccess machine UI has sell price displayed during the process - you can see it here in the right upper corner during sell process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoaviCX4Urw, so I think whoever used the machine was not careful enough to look for details of operation.

Should be. I try to keep the list updated. In case I miss something, there is feedback section on every listing, where people can leave feedback.
You can read useful info about availability of machines there, which is aggregated in success rating of each machine.

There is a  mistake in this field, I've seen it, but didn't have time to fix it (state pages are added recently).
If you look at the map or at the list of machines below the map - there are much more than 11, about 35.

As I see from online info (if you click check online button). Limit is $600 per purchase, and daily limit is $1000, so I assume you can do a second operation right after the first one for $400 more.
Didn't know they ask for ID from the very beginning, this is not usual scenario. However, operators are free to do different verifications based on their KYC/AML compliance program.

Regarding fees, this one (13.4%) is calculated online based on price feed and is calculated against to BitcoinAverage. I use the same feed for all machines to make fees comparable.
So sometimes operators might advertise different rate in case they use different feed, e.g. BitStamp, Coinbase etc, BitRocket uses by the way Coinbase feed as it is seen on the site, but I calculate fees myself. Will be good if you could check it at a new Satoshi machines and update in case it is wrong.

Yep, sorry for misleading you. But in general I think the usage is about similar in the city of similar size in the same country.
From what I hear from operators Canada and US are quite similar in usage.
And it is more depends on the location itself and done promotion, here are the average figures I know at the moment.

Usage:
buy ~90% vs. sell ~10%
In very volatile price market these proportions change quickly, but then return to about these figures in stable market.

Volume:
An average machine at average location gets about $20-30K volume per month.

Average transaction is about $200-400 from what I know, but the distribution might be skewed with many small and several significantly big ones. There are about 50-70 users per month.

These are kind average figures for average location in developed country (Europe and North America are quite similar in figures).

However, I know locations where more than $100K was done per month, although there are definitely some which even didn't make return on investment. It all varies.

Unfortunately, I have no such info. Obviously, I meant the publicly available data, like fees, limits, verifications, one-way vs. two-way, etc.
Info you ask about is available only to operator of each machine, which they don't share.

I have a post about how much some machines did with respect to volume, but again this info is based on public announcements.
You can read it here: http://coinatmradar.com/blog/bitcoin-atm-profitability-part-2-real-examples/


This one is removed long time ago. It was a Lamassu unit, which was available for small purchases. As far as I know it was due to strict German laws regarding operating bitcoin ATMs, that's why it was removed. Basically there were several other machines, like the one in Münich later, which was also removed and while it was there it was operating in demo mode selling very small amounts (up to 100 EUR to all customers per day as far as I remember). Germany sucks with respect to bitcoin ATMs, I think you need something of the bank level license to operate them there.

Hey guys. Very interesting discussion here.

Just wanted to address OP question - there are actually about 35 bitcoin machines in CA, not 2.
You can find here the full list of bitcoin ATMs in California.
Of course, there are several main areas with concentration of machines in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

Also I mentioned several times people were mentioning like there are no machines, e.g. only 1 in Sydney. There are actually 5 machines in Sydney.

For latest locations - one can use CoinATMRadar bitcoin machines map. I keep this map up to date for quite a long time. Not 100% guarantee, but many machines should reflect real data as I'm in touch with many operators. Also user feedback can be found on pages, in case I'm not that fast at updating listings.

Addressing the comment regarding the bitcoin machines lack of installation, and that the most boom was when the price was high, well, actually when the price was falling, many closed locations.
I know this because was in touch with many operators, and many still were using the model, when they held bitcoins in their hot wallet (not connecting to exchange for immediate mirror transactions).
So when price fell, BTC holdings also lost value. This was additional loss for many, that's why it was not working good.

However, since price stabilized - conditions became better. Actually what we see lately - there is a much faster growth of bitcoin ATM installations.
Check stats here http://coinatmradar.com/charts/#growth


Addressing the concern about high fees. They are at the moment 8% average for buy bitcoin, 5% sell bitcoins. In the U.S. the fees are a bit higher than average, in Europe I believe lower (have not checked it for a while).
I also found this high at the beginning, but then having conversations with people running ATMs, it is not really that high. I mean operators are not doing crazy money here, it is kind of balance of costs on one side and revenue on the other. Of course, they are doing profits, but not as a rip-off of customers. Nowadays, more and more there is a trend to follow KYC/AML, especially in the U.S. and this adds to costs as well.

In the end of the day, comparing locabitcoins, when you need to meet with some stranger you don't know, or use a bitcoin ATM at about same fee level, I would prefer bitcoin ATMs personally.

Regarding following KYC/AML - yes it's happening, but this is reasonable usually. Also as some mentioned here - Lamassu are by design don't really fit into this model and many machines in operation don't require any phone or ID verification. Rest machines - usually have phone/ID verifications. But these checks are also based on some limits. E.g. normally you can purchase some amount w/o verifications, e.g. up to $500, then up to $1000 you need phone by SMS check, and then up to $3000 you need to scan ID. It is not like you need check phone and ID for purchasing $20 in bitcoins. Usually those requirements make sense. However, as I said there are still many machines, which don't require any kind of verifications.

I find bitcoin ATMs quite useful at least at this stage of development:
- it helps people to get into crypto world quickly and smoothly (now machines are quite reliable, you don't have this Robocoin experience anymore). Also some random people can see it in public places and gets interested. I see daily many twitter posts like "you won't believe, I just saw a bitcoin ATM".
- immediate transactions without previous opening account/verifications for days etc.
- I also see more and more an opportunity for cheap money transfers. Although buy bitcoin fees are quite high I see at many locations sell bitcoin price is quite low. Sometimes it may be even -2% to the market, so even better than market. This is due to lack of bank relationships and basically operators need bitcoins to run business (90% of transactions are buy bitcoin, only 10% is sell), so operators set very low fees for sell operations. And this creates an opportunity to send money from abroad, buy using another bitcoin ATM for buy bitcoin out of the country. So e.g. if one charges 5% for buy bitcoins and another charges -2% for sell bitcoin in country, you can send money from cash to cash for 3% immediately.

If someone has any particular questions, e.g. about some stats as I have access to full database of all locations - let me know, will try to address.

This is correct if you already have bitcoins, so what you describe is about using bitcoins.
However, you need to acquire bitcoins in the first round, this is for bitcoin ATMs are used. Very straightforward use case.

This is kind of standard terminology:

• one-way are those machines that capable only of selling bitcoins to users (support "one way" only)
• two-way are those which allow to buy bitcoins and also sell bitcoins.

Currently in the world the split is 40% two-way vs. 60% one-way bitcoin ATMs.

Doesn't sound really great after reading this.

This is not dictated by any bitcoin ATM for sure, generally you may run this business without having a bank relationship at all. But then you need to convert your cash to bitcoins in some way on regular basis. E.g. if you find a miner that will be ready to sell you bitcoins for cash - then you just found a workaround. There could be other examples. The ideal case with having bank account basically means you get exchange feed with a minor exchange fee (like 0.2%). In case of buying bitcoins in other places - you need to negotiate the price. E.g. miner will want to sell you bitcoins at higher than exchange rate, because he will need to somehow deal with your cash later on.

According to my discussions with operators - to find a bank, that will know about your bitcoin business and still continue relations - is very very hard.
It is not only about "bitcoin" which banks resistant to, but also you will deal with a lot of cash, which makes it even harder to persuade the bank. They just treat you as too risky and close accounts.

In Australia there was a case, when machine operator was fully AML/KYC compliant (obeyed all required laws), but banks didn't want to have such a customer.

Generally, as it turns out in North America (US, Canada) it is pretty similar nowadays.

But again, this is not required by any machine. As normally every bitcoin ATM software supports both: operations from your hot wallet (in this case you might no even connect it to exchange, but replenish manually), or automatically repurchase coins from exchanges and get deposited to your hot wallet. It works like this: you have some liquidity in your hot wallet, whenever customers buy bitcoins from you - there is a mirror deal on the exchange for the same amount.
It is better because you do 2 deals immediately, and get your fees in a guaranteed ways. Otherwise (manual replenishment) - you hold the exchange risk, because after you purchased bitcoin the price might go up or down before customer purchases from you. In case of exchange mirroring you bare the exchange risk only for the amount of your liquidity volume, which is much lower.

Connection to exchange is usually just a setting which you need to do in the back office of the machine one time. Different bitcoin ATM manufacturers support different ones, but the general ones are usually supported.
As an example, go to general bytes site: http://www.generalbytes.com/batmtwo/

And you see supported exchanges:
Bitstamp.net   Yes
Coinbase.com   Yes
Bitfinex.com   Yes
TheRockTrading.com   Yes
Cointrader.net   Yes
Quadrigacx.com   Yes
Kraken.com   Yes
Digitalx.com   Yes

Also there is a list of supported wallets:
Blockchain.info   Yes
Coinkite.com   Yes
bitreserve.org   Yes
Coinbase.com   Yes
Bitcoind   Yes
Litecoind   Yes
Dogecoind   Yes
Block.io   Yes

Right, 100K is just out of the loop.
Normally they cost about 5-6K depends on manufacturer and features.
The cheapest one-way is General Bytes for about 3K, the cheapest 2-way is probably bitxatm for ~5K, but I find others although a bit more costly, but more preferable (my own opinion).

You are on the right track, but there are several more:

(5) You need to have bank relationships, in order to convert cash into money you can wire to exchange. And it is not more about costs of maintaining account, but rather to get such a bank willing to work with you.
On low volume however you might not report about your activity to bank and just deposit cash to your account, however, on professional volume it doesn't work as 1 machine brings about 20-30K of cash per month. Imagine you have 5 machines, that means you will have to deposit 100-150K of cash per month, banks won't miss it for sure.

(6) Renting a place. Ideally you could find some enthusiast who runs a local business and would like to put your machine at his/her place for free, but to get a good traffic location like in the shopping mall - you will definitely have to pay for this.

(7) Cash logistics costs. You will need to collect cash out of ATM regularly. Of course, at start you could do this yourself, but having several machines - you will need to spend much more time just to visit those + some robbery risk involved. If you assign this to professional - will cost you additional fee do have this task done.

(8 ) It was mentioned already to some extent and it depends on your location - but you might need to get licensed first in order to run such a machine. This is not undoable, and almost always possible, however, it might be very costy, e.g. pay to lawer to consult first and understand do you really need it and what kind of licenses  you need, then applications and costs associated with getting license.

(9) Maintain business costs: you need to have support line, you need to do accounting, normally you need to be KYC/AML compliant, so have the policy written, also somebody take the role of AML officer for your business. I mean you could do all this stuff yourself, but if it grows - you will definitely need to distribute tasks and pay for this.

In general, this is all comes to my mind.

Somebody here mentioned Skyhook - not advised, machines are not supported and many reported, that order paid, but never received machine. So looks like Skyhook and Robocoin are history, although there are several installations still present.

If you look at bitcoin ATM manufacturers, I would advise to look at: lamassu, genesis coin, general bytes, bitaccess, bitxatm.

Here are also some useful links to start from:

Bitcoin ATM ROI calculator
How much bitcoin ATM can earn (real examples)
What to pay attention when you want to operate a bitcoin ATM

There is much more useful info on the site (coinatmradar) as well as in the blog, so hope it will help you. There are all locations currently known with bitcoin ATMs, fees information.
General bitcoin ATM industry statistics is summarized here.

In general bitcoin ATM is a very interesting business opportunity, but this is not something you can earn a bunch of money over night. There is a lot of hard work involved.

Here is the most up-to-date bitcoin ATM map I know http://coinatmradar.com/, by coincidence I run it myself 
Many details of ATMs like fees, limits, online prices are available.

In many cases the process of buying bitcoins is simple as scan code, feed cash, click send = 15 seconds. No registration or verification.
Almost all lamassu machines (~30% of all bitcoin ATMs) work like this.

Here are couple of useful links:
http://coinatmradar.com/blog/bitcoin-atm-profitability-part-2-real-examples/
http://coinatmradar.com/blog/how-to-start-a-bitcoin-atm-business/

There are quite many new installations (I run coinatmradar.com). However, I must admit there are many which close business.

In the end of the day - the main reason is probably lack of demand. Masses are still not looking of entering into bitcoin.

So sometimes the machine might be not profitable, taking into account initial costs (machine price, legal costs) - not that many operators might want to try it.

However, I know operators who earn a lot via bitcoin ATM business, of course, they run a network, not just one machine.

Other reasons are regulation and high fees. Regulation and all compliance stuff made the operators very careful of entering this business, both from the cost and organizational perspective.

As the result fees are quite high, now about 6% commission on average. With increased competition fees didn't go lower. I think mainly it's because the most of buyers will buy the same amount of bitcoins at 3% commission or 6% or 10%. So basically these high fees are kind of equilibrium operators find in order to maximize profits. If you make fees lower - you won't get that much new customers in order to cover the commission difference via volume.

Check bitcoin machine locations map or alternatively you can use bitcoin ATM iOS or Android app to check closest locations to your place.