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Hi guys. Not sure if it's accepted to write in English in this subforum, so please excuse me in advance.
I wanted to know which banks are crypto friendly in Spain. Where should I open a bank account that will not cause me problems with transfers to/from crypto exchanges. Primarily Kraken.
Are there any problems with regards to AML, etc...
Say I want to buy a house and I sell some BTC on kraken and wire them to my Spanish bank account. Do you foresee any problems? What other options can you recommend?
Thanks in advance!
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Indeed, language barrier is a heavy obstacle. I will try to find out more and come back to this topic when I'll have more information... However, I don't know when or if I will be able to do that. The next few days I will be in a vacation and I may try to dig more after I come back. However, my main problem is the lack of time... I am having two jobs at the moment and - believe me - as much as I'd like to help you, I literally have no free time. And, excepting the two jobs, I also have a small baby, which - obviously - needs my attention and most of my free time... I am very sorry for your loss. And I will trey to help you with some more information, in time. I just don;t know when... But pay attention to this topic in time, as you'll see some updates from me at some moment  Cheers! Thank you for taking the time! I've given up hope a long time ago, but the other thread brought back some memories that I decided to share with the community, and reignited my curiosity about what actually happened. Reading a translation of the court ruling you found (thanks for that), it seems no bitcoin were recovered, just some of his stuff got confiscated. Good luck with the baby, and thanks again. Cheers! |
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However, take into consideration that BitXatm is not a Romanian ATM manufacturer. Such ATMs do not exist in Romania. More over, their website - https://www.bitxatm.com/ - is not functional anymore, thus I have no idea from what country the manufacturer really is. According to CoinATMRadar though, such ATMs appear in US, UK and Finland ( https://coinatmradar.com/manufacturer/19/bitxatm-bitcoin-atm-producer/) and, according to same website, they are produced by a German company: Global Funds Transfer (GFT) GmbH. The mother company was registered in Germany, yes. But the company that produced and operated the backend of the ATM's was romanian. They were produced in Brasov. The CEO and CTO were romanian (Catalin Tincu and Gabriel Prodanescu). The german company was just a shell. One of the victims I talked with had visited their office in Germany and it was just a Regus virtual office, I think. When the ATM broke down at one point I sent it to Brasov to get it fixed. Could you offer some more information about how you became the victim? As far as I saw from the links you provided, the thief stole money from the ATM, not from you...
I was an owner and operator of one such machine. Since the wallets of the machines were custodial and BitX had access to them the said employee just transferred the funds from the ATM wallets to his own. I have elaborated more about what happened here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5356230.msg57795081#msg57795081It seems that the thief was an ex-employee of the company so again - how did he steal from you?
See above In the Court decision it's stated that the thief, using company's credentials, stole 40.63 BTC from the account of a client from Dallas and transferred them to his personal account held at Kraken. Are you the client from Dallas?
No, but he cleaned out the wallets of multiple ATM operators. Didn't know about the Dallas one, but I know that besides my ATM he also stole the balances of Bitcoin Suisse and some Korean operator as well. I think the total stolen was more close to 100 BTC in total. Also in the Court decision it's stayed that the ATM company is Romanian but, however, I never heard of such ATMs in Romania. And apparently, he also involved a Romanian crypto exchange to hide the money tracks - Bitcoin Romania.
I don't know if any operated in Romania, but they were produced there for sure. All in all, thank you for bringing this up. I was not aware of this case, although I am Romanian... It's incredible! And I am sorry for your loss.
From what I see, it's certain that the thief was arrested, taken into trial and convicted. According to the papers you provided, it seems that he died. However, in order to make sure of it, a months-long investigation would be required and the result is not guaranteed.
I am looking forward for more information from you about your prejudice and how you became a victim... If you need more digging, let me know. However, I can not promise anything.
I have done some digging of my own, but the language barrier prevents me from understanding most of the things I find. If you could figure out if there were any BTC actually recovered and if there is a procedure for me to make a claim to recover at least part of my losses, that would be awesome. |
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I started a thread in the Romanian subforum https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5356838.0, so let's see what they say about it. I also uploaded the document scans I received regarding the death of the alleged thief. Let's see what comes out of it. |
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You can pretty much trace all the info in the blog archive. That's as much as I got as well, and I lost 9 fucking BTC because of those incompetent fucks.
That is a story you would need to tell us with more details, and I guess 9 BTC was a much less few years ago but it hurts you more and more as Bitcoin value goes up :/ Well, OK. Here's a short version: Me and some friends were running a small neighborhood cafe. It was a side gig for me (I'm primarily a c++ dev, working remote). The cafe was right across the street from my home and I used to spend a lot of time there. Then I got the idea to install a BTM in the cafe. Did some research about various manufacturers, etc... BitX was the cheapest, but I had some red flags w.r.t. the custodial wallet, etc... But, through some contacts, I got in touch with Bitlendingclub, who had a BitX machine in their office just gathering dust, because they had bought it, but none of them had the time to put into operating it, and they were more than happy to get rid of it. So I just drove a few km to their office, loaded it in a van and the next day it was operating in the cafe. So this was the first two-way BTM in Bulgaria. We also started accepting bitcoin payments and we gave 10% discount if you paid in bitcoin (the BitX machine could function as a POS terminal as well). At some point lots of people started coming in just to look at the machine, or just to pay their bill in btc. We started hosting bitcoin meetups every month. It was pretty fun. When someone came around and needed help, they'd just call me (if I wasn't already there) and I'd just come down and help the person to create a wallet, answer questions, etc... Met with a lot of interesting folks that way, and the place kind of became the bitcoin go-to in Bulgaria. I even met with the Lamassu founders, Josh and Harvey. They came to some of the meetups. Regarding the machine itself, I was pretty disappointed. The customer support was atrocious, at one point even threatening to stop answering my tickets. No double spend protection when selling bitcoin. It would just spew out the cash before even 1 confirmation has passed. The POS terminal was a joke. It printed out a piece of paper with two QR codes, one labeled bill and one tip. So if you wanted to pay and give a tip you would need to make TWO on-chain transactions. Anyway, it kinda did the job, and I was constantly monitoring whats was going on. Now comes the sad part. I was always cautious not to hold too much BTC in the wallet. Always around 1-2 btc and just refill when empty. I had a guy call me up that said he wants to buy 5-6 btc in the next few days, and I was going on vacation, so I just topped up the account with another 6-7 btc, just this once(tm). Talk about bad timing. When I came back from vacation the machine was showing a system message that said that the network was under a heavy DDoS attack and that they were working to fix it ASAP. A couple of days passed without the situation improving. Then I came across an article about a theft at BitXatm. So I learned about the theft from a news site, not from BitX! Lots of angry email later they started a "compensation process". I filled out claims forms, sent them notarized documents of my claims, yada, yada. At one point they just stopped responding to emails. I did some research and figured out that some of the other BTMs that were robbed belonged to Bitcoin Suisse, so I got in touch with them in order to try to organize a common lawsuit. There was also a Korean operator who was also a victim of the theft. Long story short, we decided not to engage in lawsuits, because it would probably cost more money then we'd lost, and even if we win, they'd just go bankrupt and we'd still get nothing. At the time, I think, my 9 btc lost were worth around $10K. As there were a lot of people still coming in to trade btc I started doing p2p trades, which turned out to be a lot easier and fun. That's why I never bought another BTM. As to the guy that died in prison: I occasionally email the CEO (Gabriel Prodanescu), who now claims that he doesn't work for BitX anymore, but still answers to his @bitxatm email. Last time he wrote me this: Did you follow the case from the Criminal Court ?
The employee is DEAD, the Criminal Court closes the case.
Bitx has the factory closed from 2018 with no more production for sale, is over.
Open source project is available to existing customer
We lost it all!
I pushed some more and he sent me scans of death certificate and other documents(in Romanian). I'd love if someone that speaks Romanian could translate them and even verify if that's true or not. As to the "open source project", I sent multiple emails to get access, and only silence from the other end. Anyway, here's a fun video from the joint https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dZDFrHLro |
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For some reason, all I see is a blank page [screenshot] and most likely that's the case with others as well, but I did manage to find an archive of their blog on another website: " Link" I have problems viewing the page with firefox as well. With chrome/chromium it shows up fine. Anyway, your link works on both, so all's good. |
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I am pretty sure it is not going to work anymore.
Have you tried to contact Plutobtm and ask them if they have any connection with old company and if you can use their server and software with your Bitcoin atm machine. in worst case scenario you can keep it as collectible item, it may worth much more in future than now, or you can make an offer to sell it in bitcointalk marketplace section. It looks like that original price for this new machine was around €3,900 back in the days. Different Bitcoin ATM (BTM) manufacturers have different models. BitXatm was centralized and custodial. They ran the backend server for all their BTMs. That's why they got cleaned out by an employee. But I think all of the BTM's in existence are just a frontend to a server, which you run elsewhere. If it gets stolen, only the cash in it is at risk. The wallet is not on the BTM but on the backend. Of course, if you don't realize it's been stolen the thief could just clean you out by inserting bills on one side and taking them out on the other, while you're sending him bitcoin It's not that I don't trust your words, but do you actually have some proof or some old article showing that story about previous owners and worker that allegedly stole coins and got arrested. I am not sure how other Bitcoin ATM machines are working, but I know there are several major producers like GenesisCoin, General Bytes, BitAccess, Coinsource, Bitstop, Lamassu and many small ones, plus there are various operators available: https://coinatmradar.com/manufacturers/PS Venezula government recently purchased bunch of Bitcoin ATM's but I am not sure what model exactly. Don't trust, verify, eh?  https://web.archive.org/web/20171022113333/http://blog.bitxatm.com/post/150824553721/bitxatm-network-sabotage-updateYou can pretty much trace all the info in the blog archive. That's as much as I got as well, and I lost 9 fucking BTC because of those incompetent fucks. |
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As the topic already says, i bought a btc atm. I know im a bit late to the party maybe, but it was a bargain  Even if it was a bargain, what's your plan? You didn't really buy an ATM for decoration. You're planning to make some money out of it; so, what's your plan? In my country, there are several of Bitcoin ATMs, but they have high commissions and that's why they don't use them. They also sell Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash. Also, out of curiosity, how do you setup such thing? Does it run a node behind? Do you set your own commission fees? Does it have a hard drive which contains the seed your customers will derive addresses from? What happens if someone steals it from you and compromises that drive? Different Bitcoin ATM (BTM) manufacturers have different models. BitXatm was centralized and custodial. They ran the backend server for all their BTMs. That's why they got cleaned out by an employee. But I think all of the BTM's in existence are just a frontend to a server, which you run elsewhere. If it gets stolen, only the cash in it is at risk. The wallet is not on the BTM but on the backend. Of course, if you don't realize it's been stolen the thief could just clean you out by inserting bills on one side and taking them out on the other, while you're sending him bitcoin |
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Ah, the good ol'BitXatm. Brings back memories... I used to operate one. Sorry to rain on your parade, but you can't operate one without their server. They used a custodial wallet because their business model was to take a cut from every transaction. The company went out of business when, allegedly, one of their employees took off with the wallets of most of their machines. 100+ BTC I think it was. Mine included. Also, allegedly, the police caught the employee and there was a simulated compensation process, but nothing came out of it. Also, allegedly, said employee died in prison. Even if you could get them somehow to make it work, I wouldn't trust them with a single satoshi. Some links for the curious: https://web.archive.org/web/20180703213757/http://blog.bitxatm.com/ |
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