Vietnamese Exchange BitcoinVN Is Seeking Investors For 12 New Bitcoin ATMs

[buwaytress]

Hey OP, nice to see a bit of progress from when you first posted. Glad you moved the thread here too. Which team member are you btw? Or posting on behalf of? Should get Weil or Nguyen in here too really!

Listened to the podcast, you guys should livestream the next VN meetup, seriously.

My thoughts: talking about Weil as a BTC OG and holding down the fort in VN, probably true to some extent but that kind of reference doesn't go down well with a lot of people, if you know what I mean. Southeast Asians are quiet about their participation, but active. Weil isn't holding down the Bitcoin fort with an exchange and BATM business... holding down the corporate side of things maybe!

[1713509702]

1713509702

[layer1gfx]

BTM Department BitcoinVN – Bitcoin ATM Fundraising – Update 02.12.2019

With the current batch of 12 machines reaching HCMC port within the coming days the current fundraising round will end by 31.12.2019.

We will continue to update on our progress in regard to our network expansion plans and any future upcoming opportunities on our website and via our Social Media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Bitcointalk.

We thank everyone for the received support so far and wish everyone a successful last month in 2019!

BTM Department – BitcoinVN

[layer1gfx]

Here is an Interview with Ariel (Nguyen) of Italiani’s, the first Bitcoin ATM location in Vietnam.

[stomachgrowls]

BTM Department BitcoinVN – Bitcoin ATM Fundraising – Update 02.12.2019

With the current batch of 12 machines reaching HCMC port within the coming days the current fundraising round will end by 31.12.2019.

We will continue to update on our progress in regard to our network expansion plans and any future upcoming opportunities on our website and via our Social Media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Bitcointalk.

We thank everyone for the received support so far and wish everyone a successful last month in 2019!

BTM Department – BitcoinVN

Why not consider on trying to seek out local people first ? You do need 20 person with having at least $5k to invest.
It isnt bad to seek online investors though but the hard thing here is to trust up on a business where the output is
on the other side of the globe/country.Any info's on how much you already raised?

[BTMBitcoinVN]

BTM Department BitcoinVN – Bitcoin ATM Fundraising – Update 02.12.2019

With the current batch of 12 machines reaching HCMC port within the coming days the current fundraising round will end by 31.12.2019.

We will continue to update on our progress in regard to our network expansion plans and any future upcoming opportunities on our website and via our Social Media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Bitcointalk.

We thank everyone for the received support so far and wish everyone a successful last month in 2019!

BTM Department – BitcoinVN

Why not consider on trying to seek out local people first ? You do need 20 person with having at least $5k to invest.
It isnt bad to seek online investors though but the hard thing here is to trust up on a business where the output is
on the other side of the globe/country.Any info's on how much you already raised?

Hi,

The current fundraising round is closed for further outside investors.

The machines have been purchased and have arrived in Vietnam: https://twitter.com/BitcoinATMHCMC/status/1209488409779007493



Deployment is ongoing: https://news.bitcoinvn.io/first-bitcoin-atm-in-thao-dien-saigon-placed/?lang=en



And while we very(!) well understand the hesitation towards "Crypto business" out of Vietnam, we would like to mention that our mother entity BitcoinVN is Vietnam's oldest Bitcoin Exchange Service (established in late 2013) and partially operated by German Expats/"Bitcoin OG"'s" with a long history in the space  - see also here for more information: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215245.0

Andrew Rowan also wrote a couple of years back a feature about our mother entity: https://medium.com/@MrRowan/a-brief-history-of-bitcoin-in-vietnam-a41a7b26cb83

We might have other opportunities available in the future, so in case you might be interested to participate in any future expansions feel free to also follow us on Twitter or Facebook .

[BtcATMs]

Hi,

Great to see your project launch was a success. It is very inspirational to see your progress!!!  I wish you a lot of luck. We are hoping to achieve something similar here in Spain/Europe and we are very glad to see a project like yours doing well  

[BTMBitcoinVN]

Hi,

Great to see your project launch was a success. It is very inspirational to see your progress!!!  I wish you a lot of luck. We are hoping to achieve something similar here in Spain/Europe and we are very glad to see a project like yours doing well  

Thank you. 

We wish you success for your project as well!

Maybe at some point in the future we might even find some ways to cooperate on business matters!

Greetings from Vietnam 

[BTMBitcoinVN]

Good evening! 

While the People Committee of District 1 in HCMC announced the closure of all bars, nightclubs, massage salons etc. in District 1 due to the Coronavirus situation, we would like to assure our customers, that our current two locations in District 1 at Italiani's Ly Tu Trong 290 and Italiani's Han Thuyen 17 are *not* affected by the measures taken by the local authorities.

All our locations are operating normally. 

[layer1gfx]

thanks for the update, guys... some of my friends would appreciate to know it is still working.
i guess, the C is very much affecting all of the businesses in D1 right now.
keep calm and buy bitcoin!

[BTMBitcoinVN]

thanks for the update, guys... some of my friends would appreciate to know it is still working.
i guess, the C is very much affecting all of the businesses in D1 right now.
keep calm and buy bitcoin!

Thank you! 

We will do our best to keep everyone informed and up to date to our best abilities.

It is of course a very fluid situation and things can change by the hour, but so far we can still confirm to be fully operational on all our locations.

[BTMBitcoinVN]

Partially related - our mother company BitcoinVN was this week covered on badcredit.org:

[BTMBitcoinVN]

All our BTM have been supplied with hand sanitizers to increase hygiene in these daring times.

[buwaytress]

Cool stuff, just checked back here after a while and pleasantly surprised to see the machines already arriving. I know it arrived late December so what was your volume like before the big C came? Hope the volume was motivational.

Should train people to wipe down the machines too (provide the wipes) or gloves if they want to use, though I would say if Hanoi's in lockdown, you should just follow suit and get non-critical stuff down.

@BTCATMs nice to see you found this thread too.

[BTMBitcoinVN]

Should train people to wipe down the machines too (provide the wipes) or gloves if they want to use, though I would say if Hanoi's in lockdown, you should just follow suit and get non-critical stuff down.

Thank you very much for your continued interest in our project.

The volume has gone down (not dramatically so) a bit since currently Vietnam is in lockdown and all borders closed (so no tourists are coming to use the machine which where a minor, but significant part of our user base); overall we are holding up quite well though.

In Vietnam (almost) everybody is quite aware of the situation and use of facemasks / hand sanitizers is widespread. Our firm also switched since last month to basically fully remote office and any physical interactions which still take place, are conducted with outmost care to avoid getting infected (many Vietnamese people live with and/or close with their parents and elderly family members which make it even more important to not become a spreader).

[BTMBitcoinVN]

Update on Locations due to the increased lockdown measures in Ho Chi Minh City since 24/03/2020:

Updated opening hours:

- Italiani's Pizza opens from 1pm-1am
 

- Italiani's Pizza Han Thuyen open as usual 10am-10pm
 

- PizzAmore*- location closed down until next notice
 


*If you "only" look to get some #pizza in #thaodien; Pizzamore still operating their delivery service

Source: https://twitter.com/BitcoinATMHCMC/status/1242961339942760448

[buwaytress]

Thank you very much for your continued interest in our project.

The volume has gone down (not dramatically so) a bit since currently Vietnam is in lockdown and all borders closed (so no tourists are coming to use the machine which where a minor, but significant part of our user base); overall we are holding up quite well though.

In Vietnam (almost) everybody is quite aware of the situation and use of facemasks / hand sanitizers is widespread. Our firm also switched since last month to basically fully remote office and any physical interactions which still take place, are conducted with outmost care to avoid getting infected (many Vietnamese people live with and/or close with their parents and elderly family members which make it even more important to not become a spreader).

I've been following a few BTCATM projects over the past two years. The numbers are hard to ignore in terms of proliferation, and I am from Southeast Asia where in my own capital 2 ATMs were installed years ago but sadly, fell into disrepair (that I know of anyway based on the bitcoin atm radar of circa 2016).

Good luck to you. It's going to be bad for most businesses -- crypto not excluded -- but we will all come back bigger than ever!

[BTMBitcoinVN]

Thank you very much for your continued interest in our project.

The volume has gone down (not dramatically so) a bit since currently Vietnam is in lockdown and all borders closed (so no tourists are coming to use the machine which where a minor, but significant part of our user base); overall we are holding up quite well though.

In Vietnam (almost) everybody is quite aware of the situation and use of facemasks / hand sanitizers is widespread. Our firm also switched since last month to basically fully remote office and any physical interactions which still take place, are conducted with outmost care to avoid getting infected (many Vietnamese people live with and/or close with their parents and elderly family members which make it even more important to not become a spreader).

I've been following a few BTCATM projects over the past two years. The numbers are hard to ignore in terms of proliferation, and I am from Southeast Asia where in my own capital 2 ATMs were installed years ago but sadly, fell into disrepair (that I know of anyway based on the bitcoin atm radar of circa 2016).

Good luck to you. It's going to be bad for most businesses -- crypto not excluded -- but we will all come back bigger than ever!

Thank you.

Yes, many "about-to-be"-BTM-operators severely underestimate the amount of time/effort/nerves; problem solving skills & technical knowledge, business negotiation skills (e.g. working with location partners) and resources for customer service it takes to run these machines.

And that is all before we even talking about marketing/SEO; liquidity management; regulatory requirements and many other areas come in...

Many newcomers think they buy a machine; throw it into a corner and plug it in... - and then it's printing them money consistently every month.

And the companies selling you those machines have of course an incentive to induce such an image into your mind to sell more machines 

The reality is unfortunately not even close to this.

Our team also had a learning curve to take back from 2016 onwards when we installed the first machine here in Ho Chi Minh City; for the first 2-3 years we certainly also did not operate on the level we are operating now and it was more of a sideplay for the owners of our mother company BitcoinVN.

However, earlier last year the decision was made to put more experienced and skilled human resources behind this project and build it out as a proper department within the entire company - and the results of these changes have been very encouraging and resulted ultimately in a much better experience and service level for our customers, a massively reduced downtime and last but not least a multiplication of business revenue.

[layer1gfx]

i wonder what we could come up with to avoid that the BTM users have to touch the machine at any point?

who knows how long the usage of physical cash would be normal?

maybe soon we will carry only digital fiat on our wallets to go shopping and use it on a BTM 3.0 as well to pay contactless for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin... ?

have you looked into methods of sanitizing bank notes e.g. with special UV lamps?

[buwaytress]

Yes, many "about-to-be"-BTM-operators severely underestimate the amount of time/effort/nerves; problem solving skills & technical knowledge, business negotiation skills (e.g. working with location partners) and resources for customer service it takes to run these machines.

And that is all before we even talking about marketing/SEO; liquidity management; regulatory requirements and many other areas come in...

Many newcomers think they buy a machine; throw it into a corner and plug it in... - and then it's printing them money consistently every month.

And the companies selling you those machines have of course an incentive to induce such an image into your mind to sell more machines 

The reality is unfortunately not even close to this.

Our team also had a learning curve to take back from 2016 onwards when we installed the first machine here in Ho Chi Minh City; for the first 2-3 years we certainly also did not operate on the level we are operating now and it was more of a sideplay for the owners of our mother company BitcoinVN.

However, earlier last year the decision was made to put more experienced and skilled human resources behind this project and build it out as a proper department within the entire company - and the results of these changes have been very encouraging and resulted ultimately in a much better experience and service level for our customers, a massively reduced downtime and last but not least a multiplication of business revenue.

Very interesting to read your experience. Unfortunately, for many businesses in crypto, not just in your sector, people seem to have very skewed expectations. Like most businesses, it's a lot of hard work, patience and well, luck. I've not had very much success in my own ventures, but I recognise that those who do succeed are patient enough to experiment and try, learning as much as possible from different methods.

It's also non-formulaic, different geography, different economic class, demographics are so, so important to me. But I'm really curious if there were any proper attempt to study and assess the performance of all these BATMs globally. Every report out there is simply about growth, and no real insight into usage. Perhaps we'll touch base about this down the road.

Thanks for your time!

[BTMBitcoinVN]

i wonder what we could come up with to avoid that the BTM users have to touch the machine at any point?

who knows how long the usage of physical cash would be normal?

maybe soon we will carry only digital fiat on our wallets to go shopping and use it on a BTM 3.0 as well to pay contactless for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin... ?

have you looked into methods of sanitizing bank notes e.g. with special UV lamps?

Well, in the case of "BTM 3.0" - wouldn't an app suffice for that?  

As long as physical cash is around (and it certainly has its use cases), you can't avoid physical machines like the one's we run.

It is a niche service which probably most users in our location won't need since they might have other solutions in place to on-/offramp Crypto.

But if you are unbanked and/or just need some quick cash or generally value your privacy... - there is a whole range of reasons why a BTM can be a valuable service.

And in a 10-12m people city even such a "niche market" is already an interesting one.  

Sanitizing bank notes:

Not yet!

We are at the moment extra careful to only put fresh bank notes straight from the bank into the machines when we refill, but ultimately the end user also has to take its own precautions.

For now remodeling the whole machine to run them through an UV light before spitting them out is beyond our capabilities / cost-prohibitive for us.

But it is certainly an interesting idea and we're happy to adopt it should the BTM manufacturers provide such a service from their side.