LibertyX allows users to make purchases with cryptocurrency using their mobile app or through the Bitcoin ATM with a variety of retail stores in the United States. The company said, it currently serves 20,000 retail stores in the United States with 9,500 cryptocurrency ATMs.
Yep, there are tons of
BTCATMs in the US and the number has increased at a crazy rate in the last year or so. I wrote a post not too long ago in which I said that there are
4 **
edit: I just checked, and now there's 5!** of them in my town (which isn't that big) right now, whereas there was only 1 (which wasn't even working) just over a year ago. There are even more popping up in neighboring towns, which are also not large in terms of population, and in case anyone isn't aware of
coinatmradar, it's an excellent website that shows you where all of the
BTCATMs are in the world.
What I wonder is whether those machines are seeing much use. What I do know is that the various gas stations/convenience stores in which my local ones are located don't accept crypto as payment, nor do any of the local businesses (AFAIK). So while I think it's probably a good thing that NCR is buying LibertyX, I wonder if they're going to try to entice merchants in the neighborhoods around these ATMs to accept bitcoin. If they don't, then there's no urgency for people to buy crypto using them--plus, people are going to prefer to spend fiat anyway.
Why would anyone put their $20-100 bills into a
BTCATM (and pay the markup) simply to spend the crypto they get on something they could pay for faster and with no fees? That's the main problem that nobody has come up with a good answer for.
