CoinStar: turn coins into BTC

[cellard]

https://www.coinstar.com/

What do you think about this? looks like it's some company that wants to have ATMs where you can exchange a bunch of quarters in exchange of bitcoins and im not sure if some altcoins too.

It sounds like a positive idea to me. Everyone has fucktons of money at home that you don't even know you own in small rotting coins. I once counted up to $200 bucks worth of small coins that I would gladly convert into bitcoin before they continue rotting.

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[joniboini]

CMIIW, It seems like if you want to buy Bitcoin you have to use cash[1] and then redeem it on Coinme. So then, you need to bring your coins, exchange to cash and then buy Bitcoin with it, or something like that?

Sounds ok to me, but the fee is too big, 11.9%.

[1] https://www.coinstar.com/bitcoin

[crwth]

This is somewhat advanced to compare what we have in my country. It's in supermarkets.

So they are willing to accept coins, the cents and quarters. But the idea is that, maybe they are hoping for a rare coin to find? Maybe they created that scheme to sort out the vintage coins that can be sold at even a higher price.

This is a smart idea, and it would help people get rid of their “cents” and assisting the owner in have rare coins. Just a thought.

[o_e_l_e_o]

So they are willing to accept coins, the cents and quarters. But the idea is that, maybe they are hoping for a rare coin to find? Maybe they created that scheme to sort out the vintage coins that can be sold at even a higher price.

Not quite. The idea is that they take a huge cut of the money. Their website says 11.9%, but this varies by location and can be even higher. So if you dumb in $100 worth of coins, you'll get back $88 in notes, and the machine takes $12 profit. If you want, you can count the coins out yourself, bag them up, and take them to a bank who will change to notes for free, or you can pay for the convenience of using a Coinstar machine.

It does seem a bit of a round about way of doing things. You have to change coins to cash, then cash to a voucher, then redeem your voucher with a Coinstar account, then transfer out your bitcoins. No doubt there are other fees they charge on top of the 11.9% coin to cash fee. Why not just take your coins to your bank, dump them straight in to your account for free, and then buy bitcoin your preferred way from there?

[BitBustah]

Coinstar always charges high fees, your better off taking your coins to a bank then transferring those funds to an exchange.  Maybe this is useful to someone that has no access to a bank and likes to accumulate change off the ground.

[zenrol28]

Only cash is accepted. Coins cannot be used for Bitcoin transactions.

They got us back there.

[bitcampaign]

it looks cool but unfortunately it doesn't exist in my country, but it would be better if it was developed into many countries, I also have lots of coins at home at least than saving them better to exchange it for bitcoin or ethereum

[tmfp]

To buy Bitcoin, one commentator wrote on Twitter, it was necessary to provide an email address, phone number, name, ID verification and even a selfie photograph.

"Buy bitcoin with cash, then fill out a form, submit your ID and selfie, wait over an hour and give us your email to make an account".

From:

https://bitcoinist.com/coinstar-bad-bitcoin-experience/

[o_e_l_e_o]

From:

https://bitcoinist.com/coinstar-bad-bitcoin-experience/

In all, a $25 Bitcoin purchase cost around 4 percent in obligatory fees, as well as “extra markup” on the price of Bitcoin itself and larger-than-average transaction fees, they added.

Ouch. So all in they are taking 11.9% fee to transfer coins to cash, 4% fee to exchange cash to crypto, 2-4% premium on the exchange rate (according to twitter), and higher transaction fees to transfer your coins out. And for the privilege of them taking about 20% of your money, you have to go through full KYC procedures.

Honestly, this is ridiculous. It is a money making scheme for Coinstar, nothing more.

[franky1]

coinstar is a machine that traditionally converted junk pocket change into a voucher that could be spend in the store.
the reason junk change 'cost' money is because
1. the retailer rents the device so needs to charge a fee for the service
2. the retailer needs to empty the machine regularly. costing labour.

this is why using the traditional junk change to buy bitcoin is not available as the junk change is a service between the customer and retailer.
the bank note-btc is a service between coinstar-customer. not retailer-customer so although its the same device. the service is via a different company contractually(prevents retailer needing a MSB licence)

[FedorIzmailov]

I have seen a lot of similar projects and not one of them has proven itself well in the market. I hope that this one will show itself well.

[tomahawk9]

To buy Bitcoin, one commentator wrote on Twitter, it was necessary to provide an email address, phone number, name, ID verification and even a selfie photograph.

"Buy bitcoin with cash, then fill out a form, submit your ID and selfie, wait over an hour and give us your email to make an account".

From:

https://bitcoinist.com/coinstar-bad-bitcoin-experience/

It might look a bit 'excessive' but it is required by law, although this might turn people off, especially those who have been in the game for quite a while. Most bitcoiners and crypto users are concerned about their privacy and anonymity, but the general public wouldn't care so they might go through all the process. But I suppose the main purpose of this is to draw people's attention so that the average joe can finally own some bitcoin. Overall, not a bad idea, the more people know bitcoin, the better.

[gentlemand]

It might look a bit 'excessive' but it is required by law, although this might turn people off, especially those who have been in the game for quite a while. Most bitcoiners and crypto users are concerned about their privacy and anonymity, but the general public wouldn't care so they might go through all the process. But I suppose the main purpose of this is to draw people's attention so that the average joe can finally own some bitcoin. Overall, not a bad idea, the more people know bitcoin, the better.

Yet you can walk away with plenty of cash without having to do a single thing ID wise. The amount of cash will be exactly the same. It'll be infinitely more anonymous than the Bitcoin you get. You can do many more nefarious things with that cash too.

I know it's the norm but in this particular case it's a bit off.

[HeRetiK]

To buy Bitcoin, one commentator wrote on Twitter, it was necessary to provide an email address, phone number, name, ID verification and even a selfie photograph.

"Buy bitcoin with cash, then fill out a form, submit your ID and selfie, wait over an hour and give us your email to make an account".

From:

https://bitcoinist.com/coinstar-bad-bitcoin-experience/

It might look a bit 'excessive' but it is required by law, although this might turn people off, especially those who have been in the game for quite a while. Most bitcoiners and crypto users are concerned about their privacy and anonymity, but the general public wouldn't care so they might go through all the process. But I suppose the main purpose of this is to draw people's attention so that the average joe can finally own some bitcoin. Overall, not a bad idea, the more people know bitcoin, the better.

Are they really obliged to follow such strict procedures even for what is literally spare change? We're still talking about USD 25,- here, not thousands of dollars.

I'm just baffled that there doesn't seem to be a middle ground. At least from my perspective, coming from a country in central Europe where you can buy hundreds of Euros worth of anonymous payment options, no questions asked (prepaid credit cards and Bitcoin vouchers alike). There are certain limits where you need to verify your identity (the magic limit seems to be somewhere between EUR 200,- and EUR 500,-) but you won't get bothered for a few bucks as mentioned in the Bitcoinist article. For now at least.

Honestly I feel like a user experience such as this is doing more harm than good. Yes it does draw people's attention to Bitcoin, but to one of its worst sides. And if that's the first experience people have with Bitcoin, don't expect them to come back.

[gentlemand]

Are they really obliged to follow such strict procedures even for what is literally spare change? We're still talking about USD 25,- here, not thousands of dollars.

Any crypto exchange is going to be so anal about this that even if there isn't a law about it they'll do it anyway. And this is only in the US at present which is totally toxic for anything monetary.

It looks like on top of the normal cash fee there's another 4% plus a spread loaded against you plus higher than necessary network fees. You're probably looking at throwing away 20% and a few hours for the honour of turning your coins into BTC via them.

[kryptqnick]

https://www.coinstar.com/

What do you think about this? looks like it's some company that wants to have ATMs where you can exchange a bunch of quarters in exchange of bitcoins and im not sure if some altcoins too.

It sounds like a positive idea to me. Everyone has fucktons of money at home that you don't even know you own in small rotting coins. I once counted up to $200 bucks worth of small coins that I would gladly convert into bitcoin before they continue rotting.

I believe that the amount of coins you have actually depends on the country you live in. In some countries (like Japan and China) a lot of people use debit cards, so there aren't many coins around. In others the value of coins is so low that it really doesn't aadd up to anything significant most of the time. For example, in Ukraine the most frequent coins are worth $0,009 and $0,018, while the coins that's worth the most is worth only $0,072. However, in many countries coins do add up to quite a lot (take EUR, for example), so the idea seems really cool to me. I wish there were more of these ATMs around the world, I could use one in Budapest. But the fees gentlemand mentioned kind of make me reconsider.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Are they really obliged to follow such strict procedures even for what is literally spare change? We're still talking about USD 25,- here, not thousands of dollars.

Their website (here: https://www.coinme.com/coinstar) does say they will accept up to $2500 per person per day, although I struggle to believe anyone spending that amount of money is going to be happy losing 20% of it to these ridiculous fees, or not be able to figure out a better way of buying bitcoin that involves far less fees and potentially no KYC if they are interested in that.

[aoluain]

I like this idea, kind of like a bitcoin ATM but for converting cash into
Bitcoin. If I had that near me I would be buying small amounts very
regularly.

I do like the idea of jars of coins converted into Bitcoin though, the
idea of dumping a mound of metal onto a machine and its turned
into  crypto.....pity, maybe in the future.

[HeRetiK]

Are they really obliged to follow such strict procedures even for what is literally spare change? We're still talking about USD 25,- here, not thousands of dollars.

Their website (here: https://www.coinme.com/coinstar) does say they will accept up to $2500 per person per day, although I struggle to believe anyone spending that amount of money is going to be happy losing 20% of it to these ridiculous fees, or not be able to figure out a better way of buying bitcoin that involves far less fees and potentially no KYC if they are interested in that.

It's kinda silly though to treat a USD 25,- sale the same as you would treat a USD 2,500,- sale. I guess they have their reasons though.

Also 20% is frigging steep, that alone should prevent people from using Coinstar for money laundering as actual money laundering is probably cheaper than that.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It's kinda silly though to treat a USD 25,- sale the same as you would treat a USD 2,500,- sale. I guess they have their reasons though.

Totally, but its probably less hassle for them to just have a blanket policy for all sales rather than an arbitrary cut-off. Presumably there would be at least 1 person somewhere who would try to "game" the system by buying $1 less than the cut-off every day. With the fees as they are, they obviously aren't interested whatsoever in helping to push adoption or anything like that - they just want profit.