Bitcoin ATM (Automatic Teller Machine), with USB slot.

[BitVapes]

are you keeping these to yourself or will you sell them or (crosses fingers) open source it?

[sneak]

The only reason you'd need an ATM is to provide physical bills - this is why ATMs exist today.  With the advent of extremely cheap smartphones and near-ubiquitous 3G/EDGE connectivity, there is really zero market for such a thing.

By the time you'd built them, got the contracts in place, and put them in the market, they'd be obsolete money-sinks.

[Trader Steve]

The only reason you'd need an ATM is to provide physical bills - this is why ATMs exist today.  With the advent of extremely cheap smartphones and near-ubiquitous 3G/EDGE connectivity, there is really zero market for such a thing.

By the time you'd built them, got the contracts in place, and put them in the market, they'd be obsolete money-sinks.

I'm not so sure. One of the big challenges today is the time and hassle required to get money into an exchange before one is able to buy BTC. This brings the exchange to you - so to speak. With that said, ExchangeBitcoins.com's (http://www.exchb.com) recent announcement that they now accept cash and check deposits at 50,000 bank locations certainly helps too. And, yes, what will make the ATM's even more desirable will be when they can actually buy your BTC from you and give you cash on the spot. Until that happens, I think there will be a strong market for local buyers of BTC who can give you cash minus their transaction fee.

[Blackout]

I can confirm exchB rocks.  It's the closest thing to having one of these ATMs.  I have deposited and had my bitcoins within an hour's time.  That is currently impossible with any other exchange.

I hope they expand and keep it up and the bank doesn't shut them down and I hope to see this ATM idea expand.  This is what bitcoin needs.

[jago25_98]

[/quote]
yes, what will make the ATM's even more desirable will be when they can actually buy your BTC from you and give you cash on the spot. Until that happens, I think there will be a strong market for local buyers of BTC who can give you cash minus their transaction fee.
[/quote]

Agreed. I don't know about you but having something to the effect of a Bitcoin cash card would be absolutely amazing.
I guess it could be scripted by auto logging on to an exchange, sending coins around to auto top up a normal account. But it could be better than that;
 a bitcoin credit union card.

The union issues you a cash card and converts coins to cash balance on the card as the balance is depleted.

[flaxceed]

Exchange Bitcoins (https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/) is light years ahead of their competition.  I use them myself, and always recommend my clients to use them.  Some idiots are still screwing with Dwolla- what a joke.  Why do Tradehill and MtGox even need Dwolla?  Why don't they take money directly the way Exchange Bitcoins does? 

If both Tradehill and MtGox folded tomorrow it would greatly benefit the market.  Both suck!!!!!!

[aq]

Exchange Bitcoins (https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/) is light years ahead of their competition.  I use them myself, and always recommend my clients to use them.  Some idiots are still screwing with Dwolla- what a joke.  Why do Tradehill and MtGox even need Dwolla?  Why don't they take money directly the way Exchange Bitcoins does? 

Has anyone of you tried https://btc-e.com/. Apparently one can use any credit card to add funds on this exchange. I stepped through this process almost until the actual buy. If this is legit it could "kill" the other exchanges, because funding would be instant.
So was anyone already brave enough to test this?

[Blackout]

Anything with credit cards has died or is bound to die. It just can't be.

[d.james]

This is a great idea and people can trust 3rd party ATMs as long as they don't load their entire stash into the machine.

The USB stick should only contain 1 BTC address/private key, and you can reload it by sending 10-20BTC to that address.

So even if the worst scenario happens the loss will be minimized.

[phantomcircuit]

They're using a third party payment processor for the credit card transactions.

I would bet that the fees will either increase to the point of being ridiculous or they will simply go belly up.

[Fjordbit]

But right now, can't 3rd-party (non-bank) ATM operators theoretically save your pin number and duplicate your card and empty your bank account? I guess the difference with that is you would have recourse by complaining to your bank.

Right now there is already a real problem of 3rd-party individuals making ATM facades that do exactly that (or at least scan the card as it goes in, giving the attackers access to your visa debit feature on the same card). If this caught on, I would expect the same from these ATMs.

One thing is that wallet.dat is not a standard among different clients. For this to work, I think a working group would need to define an xml schema for wallets that all applications can share. This way the ATM would only need to understand that format.

[deepceleron]

You don't put a wallet or USB anything in an ATM, duh. You send BTC to the one time address it gives you, and get your fiat or buy physical bitcoins from the cash dispenser. Or feed it your cash and give it the address to send BTC to.

[Blackout]

Exchange Bitcoins (https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/) is light years ahead of their competition.  I use them myself, and always recommend my clients to use them.  Some idiots are still screwing with Dwolla- what a joke.  Why do Tradehill and MtGox even need Dwolla?  Why don't they take money directly the way Exchange Bitcoins does? 

If both Tradehill and MtGox folded tomorrow it would greatly benefit the market.  Both suck!!!!!!

I think the two biggies don't take money directly from banks from fear of being seized or shut down or frozen by the banks.
ExchB is taking a risk and as we can see CHASE already disappeared from the list so that leaves Bank of America & Wells Fargo.

As long as the exchange remains small it seems it works, but once some bank investigator starts asking questions... there could be trouble.