Bitcoin Vending Machine video - awesome!!!

[evoorhees]

This deserves front page coverage on every technology website.

We're seeing the future of money - a snack purchased without any government fiat currency, no Federal Reserve, no credit card company, no bank account, and no regulations. A free market purchase, if ever there was one. Warms my heart, and now I'm kinda hungry.

http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2012/01/first-bitcoin-vending-machine.html

I wrote an email to Upstate Networks with some praise - I suggest others do as well. http://www.upstatenetworks.com/contact.htm

Are any reps from that company here on the forums?

[bracek]

a friend that lives on another continent could actually keep me alive with this

is it enough to use only first 6 or so characters of an address to describe it uniquely and complete the transaction ?
to read a few first letters into friends phone and he than does the rest.

[evoorhees]

a friend that lives on another continent could actually keep me alive with this

is it enough to use only first 6 or so characters of an address to describe it uniquely and complete the transaction ?
to read a few first letters into friends phone and he than does the rest.

Yeah I think that works. Try typing in the first six digits of one of your wallet addresses into Blockchain.info (case-sensitive), and it will show your balance.

[Meatpile]

Difficult to say how amazing it is... Since that hardware would be vandalized in a second

However I do actually work for a (different than this video) company creating a "thin client" type alternate payment hardware for vending machines.


Please voice your opinions on how you would like to see bitcoin transactions on a vending machine:  (please indicate whether you are replying as a Machine operator/owner or as a customer)


Does the machine owner have to accept bitcoins himself? Or do you want it exchanged into whatever currency he usually gets?

How will the "real world" costs be payed for? Does the machine owner have to float a balance to pay for bitcoin transactions?

Is it acceptable to hold a bitcoin balance with a payment processor that is neither the machine owner, nor a typical exchange?


Thanks for the replies.

[proudhon]

Difficult to say how amazing it is... Since that hardware would be vandalized in a second

However I do actually work for a (different than this video) company creating a "thin client" type alternate payment hardware for vending machines.


Please voice your opinions on how you would like to see bitcoin transactions on a vending machine:  (please indicate whether you are replying as a Machine operator/owner or as a customer)


Does the machine owner have to accept bitcoins himself? Or do you want it exchanged into whatever currency he usually gets?

How will the "real world" costs be payed for? Does the machine owner have to float a balance to pay for bitcoin transactions?

Is it acceptable to hold a bitcoin balance with a payment processor that is neither the machine owner, nor a typical exchange?


Thanks for the replies.

To be fair the video designated the whole thing as a Lab Demo.  In any event, very, very cool.

[jjiimm_64]

+1  frikken awsome!!!

[grue]

eww... it uses a fugly java interface.

[FreeMoney]

a friend that lives on another continent could actually keep me alive with this

is it enough to use only first 6 or so characters of an address to describe it uniquely and complete the transaction ?
to read a few first letters into friends phone and he than does the rest.

Or your friend could send you coin each morning so he doesn't have to be ready when you get hungry.

[FreeMoney]

a friend that lives on another continent could actually keep me alive with this

is it enough to use only first 6 or so characters of an address to describe it uniquely and complete the transaction ?
to read a few first letters into friends phone and he than does the rest.

Yeah I think that works. Try typing in the first six digits of one of your wallet addresses into Blockchain.info (case-sensitive), and it will show your balance.

If you type your address in to firstbits.com it will tell you how many characters you need. If it tells you "1" it means you are Satoshi.

[evoorhees]

Difficult to say how amazing it is... Since that hardware would be vandalized in a second

However I do actually work for a (different than this video) company creating a "thin client" type alternate payment hardware for vending machines.


Please voice your opinions on how you would like to see bitcoin transactions on a vending machine:  (please indicate whether you are replying as a Machine operator/owner or as a customer)


Does the machine owner have to accept bitcoins himself? Or do you want it exchanged into whatever currency he usually gets?

How will the "real world" costs be payed for? Does the machine owner have to float a balance to pay for bitcoin transactions?

Is it acceptable to hold a bitcoin balance with a payment processor that is neither the machine owner, nor a typical exchange?


Thanks for the replies.

Regarding the vandalism, that whole screen component could easily sit behind strong plastic or glass... I think such a machine would be as vandalism-resistant as any other (except even more so because there wouldn't be a treasure of bills and coins to collect upon successful break-in).

Now, if I were a machine operator, I'd simply want an option to specify what portion of the btc should be converted into normal currency (and there are already services that do this). I assume all costs would be paid with normal currency for the foreseeable future. Any currency balance would be settled via a bank transfer once a week, and btc balance need simply be stored in a safe ewallet.

I think such things are not yet practical/profitable, but they are immeasurably important for proof-of-concept and their novelty value shouldn't be underestimated (like with the casascius coins). People often need to see to believe, and an American who sees he can buy his snacks with Bitcoin will have a far higher affinity for the new currency.

[willphase]

It looks like the vending machine has a BTC address it uses for all transactions rather than generating a temporary one for use in that particular purchase.  Would make more sense to generate a new recipient address specifically for the popcorn purchase, and then dispense immediately the transaction was seen.  This avoids someone else waiting for someone to pay the BTC to the machine, then someone coming along and buying something else instead with that deposit.

Of course I might have misunderstood, but it sounds like that final step is superfluous.

Will

[ydenys]

Erik,

That is nice,

But why don’t make it the other way round?

I print a QR from my Bitcoin bank (say, me is a conservative plonker, do not want to rely on my phone functioning to get my money). Load it online with coins I intend to spend (shopaholic alert). Let merchant scan it and confirm the amount with a few random digits of my pin associated with this code. (I pay a fee for a bank/’wallet service’ anyway – why not make the provider to deal with complications/speed up the process?)

And if I’m in a mood to throw cash at naked girls i can just forgo the pin part and make my QR codes pure BTC cash (until a first scan that is).

Once we have a proper support, the service provider should supply nicely printed cash-like BTC QRs/scratchable QRs with their name/ads/etc. which I can load from my ‘BTC commodity’ account. Even ‘BTC commodity’ account debit/credit card (to please those Visa/MC cork-popping gentlemen and get their support) can be issued for merchants that do not yet deal in BTC. Fees would be astronomical at first though, and all those banks would happily survive (i have nothing against it, personally – money has to be made out of thin air to support population’s demands).

[evoorhees]

Erik,

That is nice,

But why don’t make it the other way round?

I print a QR from my Bitcoin bank (say, me is a conservative plonker, do not want to rely on my phone functioning to get my money). Load it online with coins I intend to spend (shopaholic alert). Let merchant scan it and confirm the amount with a few random digits of my pin associated with this code. (I pay a fee for a bank/’wallet service’ anyway – why not make the provider to deal with complications/speed up the process?)

And if I’m in a mood to throw cash at naked girls i can just forgo the pin part and make my QR codes pure BTC cash (until a first scan that is).

Once we have a proper support, the service provider should supply nicely printed cash-like BTC QRs/scratchable QRs with their name/ads/etc. which I can load from my ‘BTC commodity’ account. Even ‘BTC commodity’ account debit/credit card (to please those Visa/MC cork-popping gentlemen and get their support) can be issued for merchants that do not yet deal in BTC. Fees would be astronomical at first though, and all those banks would happily survive (i have nothing against it, personally – money has to be made out of thin air to support population’s demands).

Yeah great ideas, both systems will likely exist in tandem for people to use.

[willphase]

on the subject of QR codes, you could just print a separate code above each item in the vending machine, then all a customer has to do is scan the code and push 'confirm' and the machine will vend whenever it receives a payment on the particular account.

Of course this means if you ever change prices you need to re-print codes with the correct payment value on it, but it does mean that no codes need to be entered into the machine at all.

Will

[evoorhees]

on the subject of QR codes, you could just print a separate code above each item in the vending machine, then all a customer has to do is scan the code and push 'confirm' and the machine will vend whenever it receives a payment on the particular account.

Of course this means if you ever change prices you need to re-print codes with the correct payment value on it, but it does mean that no codes need to be entered into the machine at all.

Will

I think that's a regression in the technology

[mila]

I could not hear, how many confirmations does the vending machine wait before it releases the popcorn?

[FreeMoney]

I could not hear, how many confirmations does the vending machine wait before it releases the popcorn?

none

[finway]

A bit slow.

[Mike Hearn]

Yeah direct integration with the vending machine to avoid the double-entry would be nice.

NFC would also make this a lot smoother. The newest versions of the Bitcoin Wallet app he used support NFC. Adding a little NFC adapter to the machine would be very easy, all it has to do is expose an address. Though in future having the machine accept a pool of serialized transactions directly is the way to go, we need more coding for that.

[Gavin Andresen]

on the subject of QR codes, you could just print a separate code above each item in the vending machine, then all a customer has to do is scan the code and push 'confirm' and the machine will vend whenever it receives a payment on the particular account.

Of course this means if you ever change prices you need to re-print codes with the correct payment value on it, but it does mean that no codes need to be entered into the machine at all.

I love that idea!  Point your camera at the product, confirm payment, and you're done.

RE: changing prices:  I wonder if you could make little QR-code-capable LCD or e-ink displays cheap enough to put 20 of them in a vending machine.

It'd also be a great opportunity for practical jokes, like making the machine vend... oh, I dunno, Nerds^TM along with their popcorn.