7 ms·
Need Bitcoins? This ATM takes dollars and funds your account
- mjdecour 14y agoThat is pretty awesome... I can't believe how much Bitcoin has grown in the past 6 months. Kicking myself for not investing.
- danboarder 14y agoI agree it's awesome, though I wonder how many approach BTC as an 'investment' rather than a currency to actually use and buy things with?
- eksith 14y agoQuite a large number, I'm afraid. I know a few people who keep hundreds to several thousand+ without spending any in anticipation of a massive buyout (or financial collapse). These were very early adopters that ran their vid cards 24/7 for years.
- danboarder 14y agoPerhaps things like this ATM (which looks very simple to use) and user-friendly online tools like Coinbase will serve to expand real-world use and the BTC economy as a whole. It would be awesome to see it become an even more stable international alternative currency.
- jerguismi 14y agoWell, it isn't very rational to collect pile of money and then just sit on it until you die. At some point these early adopters are either going to sell, or use their bitcoins.
- betterunix 14y agoIt is perfectly rational when you know that there are deflationary trends with the money. Sitting on it means you are becoming wealthier. Of course, if everyone does this, the currency will collapse, but that is just the beginning of Bitcoin's problems.
- oleganza 14y agoIt will not collapse. It's just the price will stabilize.
- betterunix 14y agoIf nobody is willing to trade a currency, the currency is worthless -- also known as a collapse.
- eru 14y agoWhy? People are still perfectly willing to buy. Just not willing to sell. That will just lead to higher prices, not collapse.
- betterunix 14y agoIf nobody is willing to sell, then there is no trade. That makes a currency worthless. Bitcoin is even more vulnerable that gold in that regard, because if Bitcoin stops being used as a currency then there will be no incentive for anyone to run the Bitcoin software -- and then Bitcoin will just die.
- oleganza 14y agoYou are confusing two causes for "no trading". Collapse will come when no one is willing to buy (e.g. crypto is broken or there is no way to spend/use it). As people anticipate this coming, they'll start selling to anybody who is still willing to buy. The price will drop until no one is willing to buy, at which point the value of commodity will become zero. On the other hand, if many people are willing to buy (in expectation of future increased usefulness), then the price will go up until no one is willing to sell. At which point every holder anticipates some future benefit, cannot buy more from anybody, but has plenty of people willing to buy from him for some price. This situation will stay like that until anyone decides to "use" money by selling it (e.g. to buy a dinner because people need to eat sometimes). No collapse here.
- josephagoss 14y agoThe good thing about the price increasing is that the early adopters are more willing to spend BTC and also convert BTC into fiat. This increases the overall value of BTC because as more people who own BTC bought in at a higher price, it will be harder and harder for the price to crash down to levels lower than the average price of BTC purchased. (I argue this based on the psychology of buying BTC at a certain price) Back when the large 2011 crash happened and even now to a slightly lesser degree the average BTC acquired/bought is still low, (i'd wager around $5 for the entire network of BTC still accessible, as a example) As more earlies sell and purchase items, this average will increase, and as it does the possibility for BTC to fall below this average becomes harder and harder.
- eksith 14y agoI remember that crash. A couple of those people were freaking out. And I think your price estimate is correct. I'd much rather they start spending them within the BTC economy than cashing in for "real" currency instead. The biggest hurdle for BTC isn't even the hoarding, it's that they hoard just because it's still not seen as a real alternative by most folks so they're waiting for the "realization, spike" in prices (I don't think we're there yet). Few people these days actually hoard cash; instead, they invest in commodities or companies. But these people are hoarding for the value of the currency itself. It's like gold all over again. I must confess though, the first time I heard about BTC, I did take it for just a very elaborate ponzi scheme. The irony is that the hoarding may, if left unchecked, turn it into exactly that.
- vidyesh 14y agoOne of the reasons its getting difficult these days to buy BTCs. Such ATMs would definitely help a lot. The thing is as of now people are still learning to accept it as a currency, once they do the market would be huge to trade/buy/sell things via BTC.
- oleganza 14y agoThe more people buying up bitcoins, the bigger the price is, the more early buyers sell some portion of their stash, the more bitcoins dissolve into the market. If at some point, everybody who wanted to invest, already done so, the price will stop rising. Some guys will sell, some others will buy more and realize that now much more people own some bitcoins and are ready to participate in exchange. Therefore, "investors" build a market among themselves as a side effect of "hoarding". And since there will be non-zero amount of people willing to exchange directly rather than sell, the price will rise further, attracting even more people. And so on until everybody who needs BTC gets some. And then nobody would need fiat.
- vidyesh 14y ago6 months ago when people were investing in hardware to start mining. I laughed off thinking, bitcoin's surge is gonna go down. But now I want to invest, waiting for a dip so I could buy some BTCs. Also considering mining.
- cryowaffle 14y agoHeh, we (miner community) were selling out Newegg of GPUs 18 months ago. If you were just getting in 6 months ago you might as well just buy bitcoins and store them.
- vidyesh 14y agoI genuinely got interested in bitcoins 12 months ago or so. But at that time it just looked like something exciting and mining looked not that profitable. The break even looked very far to reach. I always kept an eye on bitcoins. A few months ago when it looked really serious I still waited. And now it looks profitable to mine and invest. Many say I'm too late to mine, many say its still not late.
- cryowaffle 14y agoYou have to define our purpose if you want to discuss whether it's too late or not. 1) If you want to mine as way obtaining bitcoins to hold then it's literally never too late. Bitcoin could crash or go to $1,000,000,000 2) If you wanted to mine them to sell for an immediate profit then it is simply too late.
- halviti 14y agoInteresting concept, but it's only part of the way there. I don't see any thought put into physical security, yet, which is arguably one of the most important things when putting a box full of money anywhere. Then, you have to factor in the cost of the box. Assuming they can actually design an ATM quality/secure machine, who pays for it? Assuming the retailer pays for it, what sort of return could a retailer expect for having the device? TCO - How long will it take to pay off the investment. Then on top of that you need to offer a service whereby people are emptying the machines regularly. And since the people emptying these machines would be putting their lives in danger handling money all of the time out in public, you'd need to hire a professional firm like Brinks, or absorb the large costs of trying to do this yourself. Then assuming these guys want to get paid themselves, there will be administrative costs as well. How much does a bitcoin end up costing with all of the extra fees at the end of the day? Is it worth it? Does a system where you have to walk/drive to a location with cash in hand to purchase bitcoins, and pay a significantly larger amount of money for them offer value? I can see this idea appealing to the anonymous aspect of the currency, but since any location these are placed in would have to be under constant video surveillance, that makes it a little more tricky. In the end, since there already exists the ability to get bitcoins with cash at WalMart and CVS via bitinstant, I don't think this idea will go much farther than the hobbyboards and display they've tucked into a box and connected to the internet.
- oleganza 14y agoIdea: allow selling BTC for dollars too. And to maintain balance on the machine, adjust the exchange rate dynamically according to how much dollar bills are remaining or how much room is left. So people will keep it balanced to their own benefit and to the benefit of owners who would pay the difference in exchange rates and not do emptying/filling by themselves.
- mootothemax 14y agoLovely idea, but I can't help worrying that this would be a money launderer's dream, especially with the aim of installing thousands of these machines all over the place. It's a difficult one, as money laundering is one of the easiest justifications governments can use for shutting down such services (whether justified or not).
- nwh 14y agoIsn't it the same as walking into a bank and asking for a cashiers cheque?
- Karunamon 14y agoBanks have security cameras out the proverbial wazzu, and every transaction entered is going to be timestamped, audited, tracked, signed, sealed, delivered. Considering the whole point of bitcoin is anonymity (or at least pseudo-anonymity), there's a great privacy benefit to having these at random locations, assuming the makers can clear some of the logistical challenges.
- mootothemax 14y agoIsn't it the same as walking into a bank and asking for a cashiers cheque? Does anyone with ill-gotten gains keep them in a bank account? So no.
- runn1ng 14y agoMoney laundering is the whole point of bitcoin. </joke>
- diminoten 14y agoI'd say it's no easier to launder money with one of these machines than it is to shoot a man with a gun, and we still have guns.
- mootothemax 14y agoI'd say it's no easier to launder money with one of these machines than it is to shoot a man with a gun, and we still have guns. Are there well-funded lobbyists actively campaigning against money laundering regulations? This is a ridiculous argument against an equally ridiculous comparison.
- epscylonb 14y agoIn the image showing the internals, the boards they are using look a lot like raspberry pis.
- frozenport 14y agoHe said accepting Bitcoin was more reliable and safer than dealing with charge-backs, credit card fraud, and "scam sales from certain Asian countries like Malaysia or Indonesia." This is worrying because it means consumers have no protection.
- DanBC 14y agoIt's nice if consumers have a choice. So long as people know the risks it's okay to let them pick.
- epscylonb 14y agoIf you are using bitcoins to buy something local to youself, you do have protection, the local jurisdiction. One of the proposed benefits of bitcoin is that by protecting the merchant from buyer fraud, it could enable a global free market. In this case, buyer beware is the watchword, don't hand over large amounts to someone far away unless you trust them or they have very good reputation.
- Anderkent 14y agoThis is worrying because it means consumers have no protection. I think in most transactions the seller is well-known and has to worry about reputation effects, while the consumer may as well be anonymous. In which case consumer protection is not that important. For cases where both parties are anonymous/untrustworthy, you can use a protection scheme like escrow. That doesn't work when the payer can take his money back after the transaction, of course.
- oleganza 14y agoReputation-managing services will pop up later. For now do not give big amounts to anyone you do not know. At least, with Bitcoin (unlike credit cards) you can pay without fear that the rest of the money can be stolen.
- asmithmd1 14y agoThe only problem I see is that it takes 10 to 30 minutes for a transaction to be included in a block. If they give Bitcoins instantly could be double spent.
- jerguismi 14y agoYou mean that the machine operators could be doing a double spend? In every case they take the dollars before they give the coins, so you have to take the leap of faith... I don't find that scenario sensible at all. First buy $1000 machine, first customer comes in, buys bitcoins with $50, and notices that the machine does double spend. I believe he is not going to tell any of his friends...
- ewillbefull 14y agoNot precisely. The only time you really need to worry about confirmations is when you're dealing with larger amounts. It costs a lot to pull off a double-spend, more than a tiny ATM transaction anyway. This is why SatoshiDice processes immediately, except for bets over 2-5 BTC.
- swhitt 14y agoThe reason why SatoshiDICE can do this is because they include the output of the bet transaction as one of the inputs to the win/lose response transaction. If part of the bet transaction is doublespent there's a good chance it won't make it into a block. If the bet transaction doesn't make it into a block, the response transaction won't either and is therefore worthless.
- ewillbefull 14y agoNobody can cheat SatoshiDICE by double-spending and spending their response transaction, because the transactions are chained as you say. But this isn't the kind of attack they're worried about. If you broadcast a transaction and SatoshiDICE responds with a YouLoseTx, and you have built a block containing a double-spending transaction, if you "lose" you can broadcast your conflicting block. You wouldn't need much hashpower to do this and still remain positive. It's called a Finney Attack. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending#Finney_attack https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending#Finney_attack This is why they only immediately respond to smaller bets.
- dtby 14y agoITT: Hi, I don't understand economics. Yes, I know I am hell/shadow banned.
- BITCOINATOR 14y agoFirst test with this machine: put 100 Dollar in, take it out and put it in again. If accepted second time, never stop repeating this.