The following video from Chicago meetup in beginning of 2017. Gil Valentine, one of the founders of Athena Bitcoin, gives a presentation about their experience of running bitcoin ATM business.
At the moment of presentation (March 2017) Athena Bitcoin runs machines in 7 different states and 12 metro areas.
This article is for all newcomers to cryptocurrency field. At Coin ATM Radar we receive many requests to register account in order to start using bitcoins and bitcoin ATMs in particular. In order to buy and start using bitcoins, you don’t need to register with any service provider. We will cover the main options how to start using cryptocurrencies, and especially Bitcoin — the most popular cryptocoin as of today.
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The first thing you need to do is choosing where to store your bitcoins, when you buy or receive them. There are two main options:
You can store them with any of online wallets or exchanges (e.g. Coinbase, Kraken etc), in this case you trust these services, while they fully control access to your bitcoins, so generally you trust them that they will send bitcoins to you or to someone you will want to pay in the future, if you ask them to do so. This is no different from traditional banking, when you don’t control your money, rather banks do and promise you that they will execute your order to pay in the future.
However, the great thing about Bitcoin is that it allows you to fully control your funds without any intermediary and this is done with wallets installed locally on your device, be it mobile phone or computer.
This is a seventh review of our bitcoin ATM use series.
The following review is provided to us by Daniel C. from Santa Clara, CA. Bitcoin machine that was reviewed is located at Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara.
The following tutorial shows how to find a bitcoin ATM near you. It was done for the old site design, but functionally not much has been changed since redesign and bitcoin ATM map still can be found on the main page.
After watching this video you will know:
To make the process even easier, we’ve added a separate page for searching a bitcoin ATM nearby your location.
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To find a nearest bitcoin ATM to you visit our map.
To get the latest data on bitcoin machines follow us on twitter @CoinATMRadar.
If you read this post you probably have already purchased bitcoins from a bitcoin ATM and instead of using your own previously created wallet address you let the machine generate one for you. If you are still planning to buy bitcoins from a bitcoin ATM you might want to use our bitcoin ATM map to find a location or check our tutorial on how to buy bitcoins from bitcoin ATM.
Not all bitcoin machines support generating and printing of address on receipts, many don’t even support printing receipts at all. So here is a list of known bitcoin ATM types, which can generate and print a paper wallet for you:
All Genesis Coin ATMs (Genesi1, Satoshi1, Satoshi2) can do this:
Also General Bytes two-way BATMThree model (one way BATMTwo doesn’t support it), BitAccess machines and BitXatm bitcoin ATM can generate and print receipt with bitcoin wallet address:
Bitcoin ATMs make buying bitcoins easy and fast. Bitcoins purchased from Bitcoin ATMs are delivered to the recipient in one of several ways:
What if, however, you want to deliver your bitcoins directly to a bitcoin hardware wallet? Hardware wallets don’t have screens and require software to interact with the device. So how can you send bitcoins from an ATM directly to your hardware wallet?
Using a mobile wallet like Mycelium or Sentinel, you can import your hardware wallet HD seed onto your mobile device. This allows you to view your hardware wallet addresses and accept payments to your hardware wallet from your phone. There will be no need to even carry or bring the hardware wallet with you to the ATM. Continue reading
According to our bitcoin ATM industry stats, there is a growing number of bitcoin ATM installations worldwide. If someone wants to run his own bitcoin ATM or install a bitcoin machine at existing local business, what are the main points to check and decisions to make beforehand? The following article tries to answer these questions.
With all developments in Bitcoin area over last couple of years one thing became more prominent — regulation. Bitcoin ATM business is not an exception. In many jurisdictions you need to get special licenses like MSB or others in order to conduct such a business. Running a bitcoin ATM without complying with law might end up bad. So the main point to start investigating in case you would like to run a bitcoin ATM — is the legal framework for such activities in your region. Continue reading
We’ve launched a new functionality on our website of tracking bitcoin ATM locations – reports of any bitcoin ATM’s state as working or non-working. There were many complaints when someone did a long journey to bitcoin ATM just to find out that machine is not working or is simply not there anymore.
We update the site regularly as soon as we find or receive information about any changes, but sometimes this is not enough.
New functionality allows anyone to report any bitcoin ATM as active (working) or as non-working / removed by simply upvoting or downvoting a particular bitcoin machine and leaving a short feedback for reference.
Since launch the functionality have already been used by several users, e.g. somebody reported bitcoin ATM in Bucharest, Romania as working:
In our previous article we described how you can buy bitcoins using Bitcoin ATM, in this post we describe the process of selling bitcoins via ATM.
What you need to know is that not all machines support two-way operations, many still only allow to buy bitcoins, however according to our Bitcoin ATM Charts about 40% of all installed Bitcoin ATMs actually support sell operations. In order to find your nearest bitcoin machine where you can sell bitcoins – you can visit our bitcoin ATM map. Use “Crypto->Fiat” ticked in the bottom filter to show all locations where you can sell bitcoins (you need to have “Fiat->Crypto” unchecked in order to hide locations where you can only buy bitcoins).
Here is a list of Bitcoin machine types that normally support sell operations (some operators may disable sell operations, so you need to check before planning your trip):
Some other manufacturers also support sell operations in their machines, however the mentioned above represent the majority of installed units on the market.
You may be also interested in the instructions how to sell bitcoins using ATM.
WARNING: When someone asks or forces you to use a bitcoin ATM — BEWARE OF SCAMS. They might pretend to be from revenue agency, social security agency, utility companies or any other official authority (even falsifying the phone number they call from). Don’t fall for these scams. Read more details.
In order to buy bitcoins using a bitcoin ATM you need to find the closest to you location and understand what kind of machine it is. Asking yourself where is closest bitcoin ATM near me? To find all locations – visit our bitcoin machines map. At the moment there are about 30 different types of bitcoin ATMs with about 20 manufacturers having their units actually installed somewhere. It may be difficult for an average user to understand how to buy bitcoins by using a bitcoin ATM and what are the differences among various ATMs.
In this article we describe a bitcoin purchase process for 6 different mostly installed bitcoin ATMs in the world (they cover about 90% of the market altogether) and two more types, which were popular before and now are rarely used (Skyhook and Robocoin):
There is a general buy process at all bitcoin ATMs:
This process may vary from ATM to ATM, and this is what we describe for every of the mentioned above bitcoin ATM types. It is important to understand that even when machine’s software/hardware support compliance procedures, they are not necessarily activated, as it depends on the operator choice of every particular machine. That is why the same type of machine might have different verifications and limits set up.