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I'm a digital nomad and I travel around a lot. Recently I'd lost my one main debit/ATM card, I was in Budapest and was running out of cash. I'd never used cryp
by asenna 8y ago
I'm a digital nomad and I travel around a lot. Recently I'd lost my one main debit/ATM card, I was in Budapest and was running out of cash.
I'd never used crypto ATMs before as I never felt the need based in the states but for the first time I looked up a BTC ATM (5 mins walk from my hostel), transferred some BTC over from my Coinbase account, withdrew cash within 20 mins.
No Transferwise/WesternUnion, no calling up friends or family and figuring things out. This was the smoothest way I've ever received cash in a foreign country.
I'm not commenting about price speculation of crypto, etc. But if this experience is possible right now, I bet there's going to be a lot more use-cases within 5 years with actual users.
- gaius 8y agoI bet there's going to be a lot more uses within 5 years. 99.99% of people will get a backup bank card before they get into bitcoin.
- slededit 8y agoThat's 760,000 people. I think BTC already has higher market penetration.
- village-idiot 8y agoFor speculation? Probably. For use as a regular means of transacting? I'd be surprised.
- slededit 8y agoSpeculate and you get the backup account for free.
- village-idiot 8y agoOr you lose all your money because speculation is quite risky.
- asenna 8y agoYeah definitely at the moment I'm not saying people would get into crypto because of such benefits. We're definitely very early adopters. I could do this because I was already investing and had BTC in my Coinbase account. I'm just predicting at some point, more and more services will start popping up and this argument of "Is Bitcoin useful" will become less relevant.
- Angostura 8y agoOr just use GooglePay/ApplePay
- enterx 8y agoWanna bet? :) https://www.htcexodus.com https://www.htcexodus.com
- padmanabhan01 8y ago//No Transferwise/WesternUnion Ok, who set up that ATM. If not western union, there is supposedly some other company taking some percentage doing this?
- asenna 8y agoI took a picture, here is the ATM that I used - https://imgur.com/bpwmBLz https://imgur.com/bpwmBLz I was also worried about the conversion and the rate and fees but in the end when I calculated, it was barely any different from the spot price on Coinbase at that time. Honestly the ATM could've been a bit more clear on the fees and the rate, etc. But I was quite happy with the service.
- amluto 8y ago> transferred some BTC over from my Coinbase account, withdrew cash within 20 mins. Fascinating. Somehow the ATM network was confident that it had your BTC and was willing to give you actual cash within 20 minutes. That suggests that either they don't care much about security or that what you actually did had very little to do with Bitcoin. Did you perhaps actually just convert Coinbase value to Hungarian Forints without really involving any Bitcoin transactions? I'm not really trying to be snarky. There may be a genuinely useful economy based on companies like Coinbase that operate under different rules than your usual banks, but it's not clear to me that Bitcoin per se or, for that matter, blockchains, are an important part of this.
- zallarak 8y ago> Somehow the ATM network was confident that it had your BTC It is fairly simple to verify this. By this time (20 minutes), it would have had 1-2 confirmations, which is sufficient for small amounts.
- wslh 8y agoNo censorship. Do you think people like Snowden should use a bank account that could be immediately frozen?
- asenna 8y agoHere is the ATM that I used - https://imgur.com/bpwmBLz https://imgur.com/bpwmBLz I'm pretty sure they waited for two-block confirmations instead of the usual 6 because of the risk analysis. The amount was not much and so I think that might have something to do with it.
- BenoitP 8y agoUsing your Coinbase account means it didn't involve a private key belonging to you. We don't know if the ATM network and Coinbase transacted on the blockchain. That's still an occurrence of Bitcoin being a transferable unit of value, though. We're not yet on the canonical usage of Bitcoin (that would be you using a private key you're in control of), but we're getting there.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoHere in Australia we already have cardless cash from own-bank ATMs. If you still have your phone, or access to a computer to log in to internet banking, you can get a couple of codes to withdraw a preset amount from an ATM. Banks, globally, are going to offer these services well before they let their lunch get eaten.
- cesarb 8y agoI've never tried, but here in Brazil, some banks already allow withdrawing cash from ATMs without the card, using just the fingerprint authentication. No need for internet banking or even the phone. The daily limit is low, but it can be useful in an emergency.
- lowry 8y agoSame for Belgium.
- PunchTornado 8y agofingerprint? neah. I'd rather them not know my fingerprint.
- cesarb 8y agoThey already do. To open an account, you need to present your identity card, which they photocopy (both sides) for their files. Visible on the back of the identity card is your fingerprint.
- tomp 8y agoI'm more concerned about my fingerprint ever being used as a key... I'd rather have my wallet stolen than my thumb!
- mrbombastic 8y agoSome banks are piloting them in the US as well.
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoyes, this is the dream transaction but you did not mention how much your BTC had fluctuated. The real problem is the lack of stability. The economist is right for now. I believe that in time there will be a stable crypto but for now, we're just in the beta phase looking at problems and finding solutions.
- diegocerdan 8y agoDAI is a stable coin on the Ethereum network and it is decentralized. 1 DAI = $1 https://makerdao.com/ https://makerdao.com/
- replies_to_all 8y agoHN doesn't want to hear your solutions to real world problems, they would much rather just shit on Bitcoin and call Bitcoin Cash, Bcash.