World's first Bitcoin ATM to open in Vancouver this week

[Shawn Knight]

The world’s first Bitcoin ATM will be ready for its inaugural transaction starting this coming week at a coffee shop in downtown Vancouver. Manufactured by Nevada-based Robocoin with service from local operator and broker Bitcoiniacs, the $18,500 machine will be the first of five Bitcoin ATMs headed to Canada.

The machine will allow locals to exchange Canadian dollars for Bitcoins and vice versa. When depositing Canadian money, the Bitcoin credits will be added to the user’s online Bitcoin wallet. Alternately, Bitcoin credits can be used to ‘purchase’ Canadian funds which can be retrieved from the machine at the time of the transaction.

The machines will use palm scanners to identify and keep track of users which should also help prevent money laundering schemes. We are told there will be a CAD $3,000 ($2,870) limit per user, per day. At that rate, it would have taken alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht a lifetime to cash out his $80 million haul in the digital currency, but I digress.

Bitcoiniacs co-founder Mitchell Demeter said the machines will make it easier for people to buy and sell Bitcoins and hopefully drive the adoption of the virtual currency and make it more accessible.

The remaining four machines are scheduled for deployment this December in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. It’s unlikely we will see similar ATMs pop in the US, however, as government regulations have thus far been a barrier in making that happen.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/54478-worlds-first-bitcoin-atm-to-open-in-vancouver-this-week.html

 

[VitalyT]

I don't understand this bit-coin business...

The essence of any currency is in representing wealth of the nation/country that issues it and to facilitate exchange of goods and services. And what/whose wealth does bit coin represent to be worth anything?

 

[insect]

I don't understand this bit-coin business...

The essence of any currency is in representing wealth of the nation/country that issues it and to facilitate exchange of goods and services. And what/whose wealth does bit coin represent to be worth anything?

All money is based on faith. If you have faith that someone else will accept the money for goods, then it has value. That value is set by supply and demand principles. Bitcoins are accepted at a lot of stores now and the supply is limited, so as demand goes up and supply remains limited the value goes up. Bitcoins were worth close to $0 about 2 years ago because no one took them, then lots of sites popped up to take advantage of the anonymity (e.g., SilkRoad) and so demand rose, and so value rose.

Money is not based on the wealth of a nation, but on the likelihood that someone will accept it. Euros and Dollars are high value because almost every nation/store/bank accepts them. The U.S.D has fallen recently because of the increase supply as the U.S. Government has pumped dollars into the system to boost the economy and keep it out of a depression.

 

[cliffordcooley]

All money is based on faith.<snip>

Money is not based on the wealth of a nation, but on the likelihood that someone will accept it. <snip>

WTF?

Faith does not give anyone prosperity. And the only thing that gives Bit-coin value is the concept of trading outside governmental control. Therefor rendering a negative impact on governmental prosperity, unless of course there is seizures from illegal activity such as the Silk Roads incident.

 

[abysal]

Lol the bitcoin scam.

 

[NTAPRO]

The irony

 

[insect]

All money is based on faith.<snip>

Money is not based on the wealth of a nation, but on the likelihood that someone will accept it. <snip>

WTF?

Faith does not give anyone prosperity. And the only thing that gives Bit-coin value is the concept of trading outside governmental control. Therefor rendering a negative impact on governmental prosperity, unless of course there is seizures from illegal activity such as the Silk Roads incident.

Your statement doesn't make sense. If you mean religious faith, then yes, it can bring prosperity. However, I am referring to the faith in the currency. If everyone all over the world lost faith in a currency and no longer accepted it, then that currency is worth the value of the raw materials and nothing more.

And your second statement is exactly what I said already. Bitcoin gains its value from the faith of those that wish to remain anonymouse.

Finally, your last statement is incorrect. Bitcoin has little impact on governments. The impact is felt in those that do not pay taxes on bitcoin incomes (which are negligible). I think the FBI seized ~$30 million from SilkRoad (which is ~3% of all bit coins, which means all bitcoins are worth ~$1 trillion)? That's pennies and dollars to the U.S. Government which has a GDP of over $40 trillion. The defense budget is almost that each year! I doubt they care about bitcoins and more about the potential for illicit activities.

 

[yorro]

Alot of unknown groups are trying to bring down bitcoin. The currency went through a lot of ****, so this is considered a huge milestone for them, a statement that it is actually tried and endured.

No, I don't use bitcoin.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Your statement doesn't make sense.

So we have a mutual understanding for each others comment. I'll say this differently, faith has nothing to do with what is plainly evident. Everything has trading value, the only question is how much value and you don't need faith for this to be true. You want to trust a currency that relies on faith of value be my guest. As for my self, I will stick to currency that has a concrete value for as long as it lives. Once all currency looses concrete value and requires faith, I will go back to trading sticks for stones (hope you can follow the implication).

Finally, your last statement is incorrect. Bitcoin has little impact on governments.

The misunderstanding continues because you placed a value amount on negative impact. Seriously? OMFG!

 

[tomkaten]

What's the use of this new "currency" really ? More tax evasion and money laundering, like we don't already have enough of that ?

Good thing we have Earth's day once a year, when we turn off the lights to conserve energy, but we're happily mining bitcoins for 364 days, on dedicated ASICs and FPGAs sold by shady companies that make a profit by delivering them on preorders only, a year later, when they're worthless... Goddamn hypocrites, like I said in a previous post.

The only good thing about this is that it will probably die out on its own, when hash calculations will offset any potential profit (that's assuming more people will join this new "endeavor", though more and more are already seeing the light in this matter).

L.E. Paragraphs are gone in the news section comments, makes things pretty illegible.

 

[Jim$ter]

Actually bitcoin is not a scam. How is it a scam? How are they anymore of a scam than the US Dollar? Because the government didn't issue them? Actually cryptocurrency will big in the future. I think its a great investment and more and more people are learning about them and what they can do. I can buy physical stuff with them. Not just illegal stuff. You can buy illegal stuff with the US Dollar too. Its much easier to do transactions like PayPal. In fact a great company based in California called Coinbase started a PayPal like service for bitcoin. Business will begin accepting them more and more because the transaction fee is a lot lower than credit cards etc. Its like anything new people are scared and call things a scam. The bitcoin price will stabilize as it gets bigger and bigger but the people who bought in early will benefit a few years down the road. Don't put in more than you can afford to lose because its so new and no one knows how it will all playout but I'm going to bet on it...and it may well pay off.

 

[tomkaten]

Yeah, but why do we need it in the first place ? What's stopping you now from going to an ATM machine, load all the cash you have into your account and never see a dime in your life ? I'm betting that there are people who rarely even hold cash in their hands now, when even the monthly wages are being delivered into accounts attached to debit cards.

And what's the reference point for this currency ? What's it relate to ? How much computing power you can buy ? It just seems like an exercise in futility to me. IMO, we need less currencies in this world, not more, more so if they are digital and somewhat... arbitrary.

And the saddest part, as I pointed earlier... We change classic light bulbs to LED, we make electric cars to help preserve the environment... This new currency has no place in this world from that perspective, seeing that it has Average Joe buying many kWh Pentagon computers just to make a dime.

 

[Jim$ter]

I am still learning myself...The nice thing with bitcoin you can store it as a paper wallet..Bury it somewhere and no one could ever take your money. Same as you can do with paper money. As long as people are using bitcoin it will have some value. The same reason the dollar or any currency has value is because people believe it to have value. Bitcoin isn't restricted to one country. It is available to anyone anywhere and no one controls it. That is the beauty of it. Many countries currencies have become worthless. Just imagine you moved your money into bitcoin before that happened. You are safe. As long as the internet survives bitcoin will survive. It is a peer to peer system. There is a lot more to it. Do your own research. People always fear what they don't understand. A few years ago I never heard anyone talking about it. Now its being featured on more and more sites. It has ATM's and the value of a single bitcoin is almost $200. I personally think in a few years the value of a single bitcoin could be worth thousands. Well if you would like to learn more here is a good FAQ http://bitcoin.org/en/faq If you live in the USA here is is a way to buy bitcoins with your bank account. Its kind of like paypal for bitcoins https://coinbase.com/?r=520b5d93370853b9c4000014&utm_campaign=user-referral&src=

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Tbh I know very, very little about bitcoins but it could be the way of the future.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Meanwhile people like myself still doesn't understand the true value behind Bit-coin. What is all the processing for? I can't believe there are people who will help in a computational project without knowing what the cause is. And making matters worse, actually believing they are creating currency instead of being rewarded for their computational returns.

The computational project may be the best thing that has ever come to PC's. But unless I know what it is, I will not be participating and continue to question those who do. And no I'm not interested enough to filter the Internet for days trying to find out. That is the job for those who are interested, and then they can defend the project that they are so confident about.

This is the scam, not telling people openly why their machines are processing.

 

[Jim$ter]

Meanwhile people like myself still doesn't understand the true value behind Bit-coin. What is all the processing for? I can't believe there are people who will help in a computational project without knowing what the cause is. And making matters worse, actually believing they are creating currency instead of being rewarded for their computational returns.

The computational project may be the best thing that has ever come to PC's. But unless I know what it is, I will not be participating and continue to question those who do. And no I'm not interested enough to filter the Internet for days trying to find out. That is the job for those who are interested, and then they can defend the project that they are so confident about.

This is the scam, not telling people openly why their machines are processing.

Read the FAQ if you want http://bitcoin.org/en/faq That will give you the basic information you are asking. You don't have to participate by mining. If you want to just buy and spend bitcoins you are not participating in anyways. It just like having dollars. Think of the miners as the bank..They are doing all the work to secure the money and are payed for doing so.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Meanwhile people like myself still doesn't understand the true value behind Bit-coin. What is all the processing for? I can't believe there are people who will help in a computational project without knowing what the cause is. And making matters worse, actually believing they are creating currency instead of being rewarded for their computational returns.

The computational project may be the best thing that has ever come to PC's. But unless I know what it is, I will not be participating and continue to question those who do. And no I'm not interested enough to filter the Internet for days trying to find out. That is the job for those who are interested, and then they can defend the project that they are so confident about.

This is the scam, not telling people openly why their machines are processing.

I couldn't agree more. I'm so interested in this bitcoin stuff I could die. What I want is for people to draw me pictures first then maybe I'll do a bit of research. Until then...

 

[Jim$ter]

It really is neat..I have a bitoin wallet on my phone. It shows me the amount of bitcoins I have and what they are worth. I can send bitcoins to anyone who has a wallet or even just an email address. But of course they have to have wallet themselves in order to get the bitcoins. If you have a wallet on your phone I would just scan the code with my phone(it gives me your wallet address) and specify how much I want to send you...And hit send within a few seconds it will be in your wallet. Then after awhile it will be confirmed by all the miners and then you can spend it. It took me awhile to figure this all out but once I did I feel in love. Coinbase (it is a online wallet also) really makes it easy to obtain bitcoins if you live in the US and have a bank checking account. There are websites popping up all the time that take bitcoins. If anyone has any questions I will try my best to answer them. I also mine but not bitcoins as its not profitable anymore to the average Joe.

 

[tomkaten]

I must admit, the FAQ is very elaborated and answered a lot of my questions, so thanks, Jim.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. I'm still somewhat skeptical, but now I can see the potential, at least.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

It really is neat..I have a bitoin wallet on my phone. It shows me the amount of bitcoins I have and what they are worth. I can send bitcoins to anyone who has a wallet or even just an email address. But of course they have to have wallet themselves in order to get the bitcoins. If you have a wallet on your phone I would just scan the code with my phone(it gives me your wallet address) and specify how much I want to send you...And hit send within a few seconds it will be in your wallet. Then after awhile it will be confirmed by all the miners and then you can spend it. It took me awhile to figure this all out but once I did I feel in love. Coinbase (it is a online wallet also) really makes it easy to obtain bitcoins if you live in the US and have a bank checking account. There are websites popping up all the time that take bitcoins. If anyone has any questions I will try my best to answer them. I also mine but not bitcoins as its not profitable anymore to the average Joe.

Great Jim. Give me a few minutes to get a bitcoin wallet (I have an email address) then you can send me all your bitcoins. What a buddy.

 

[cliffordcooley]

What is Bitcoin mining?

Mining is the process of spending computing power to process transactions, secure the network, and keep everyone in the system synchronized together. It can be perceived like the Bitcoin data center except that it has been designed to be fully decentralized with miners operating in all countries and no individual having control over the network. This process is referred to as "mining" as an analogy to gold mining because it is also a temporary mechanism used to issue new bitcoins. Unlike gold mining, however, Bitcoin mining provides a reward in exchange for useful services required to operate a secure payment network. Mining will still be required after the last bitcoin is issued.

WOW That expains why thousands of machines are needed to process hundreds of transactions. :rollseyes: I'd like to think my machine could process thousands of transactions by itself. Why the need for so many machines?

For new transactions to be confirmed, they need to be included in a block along with a mathematical proof of work. Such proofs are very hard to generate because there is no way to create them other than by trying billions of calculations per second. This requires miners to perform these calculations before their blocks are accepted by the network and before they are rewarded.

And I'm supposed to believe my machine would process for hours just to create a proof for one transaction. I'm sorry, I'm not that gullible. These so called proofs are the very processing I am questioning.

Read the FAQ if you want http://bitcoin.org/en/faq That will give you the basic information you are asking.

I'm going to make a very bold statement one of which I normally wouldn't make. The answer to my question is not there, otherwise someone would have already answered my question freely the first dozen times I asked.

Now I will quote myself again.

no I'm not interested enough to filter the Internet for days trying to find out. That is the job for those who are interested, and then they can defend the project that they are so confident about.

If you don't know, then my question is not for you. If you don't know, then maybe you should be just as questionable. If you do know, then why be so cryptic? Telling me I can use a system of which no one seems to know anything about the very foundation in which it was built. WOW, I mean just WOW!

If someone makes a statement that Bit-coins are not a scam, I'm going to ask for clarification. If they can't clarify, then they can't make the statement "It's not a scam". My making a statement "Bit-coins is a scam" is baiting a hook of which no one is bitting. I am going to assume it is because no one knows. And if no one knows, why is there such a driving force behind Bit-coins?

 

[Jim$ter]

Cliffordcooley,
Well the bitcoin software is open source so if you can read code and have a through understanding of mathematics then I'm sure you could see for yourself how it all works. I still don't know what you are asking and I'm sure the people over on the bitcoin forum could give you the in depth answer you desire https://bitcointalk.org/index.php#1

 

[Jim$ter]

It really is neat..I have a bitoin wallet on my phone. It shows me the amount of bitcoins I have and what they are worth. I can send bitcoins to anyone who has a wallet or even just an email address. But of course they have to have wallet themselves in order to get the bitcoins. If you have a wallet on your phone I would just scan the code with my phone(it gives me your wallet address) and specify how much I want to send you...And hit send within a few seconds it will be in your wallet. Then after awhile it will be confirmed by all the miners and then you can spend it. It took me awhile to figure this all out but once I did I feel in love. Coinbase (it is a online wallet also) really makes it easy to obtain bitcoins if you live in the US and have a bank checking account. There are websites popping up all the time that take bitcoins. If anyone has any questions I will try my best to answer them. I also mine but not bitcoins as its not profitable anymore to the average Joe.

Great Jim. Give me a few minutes to get a bitcoin wallet (I have an email address) then you can send me all your bitcoins. What a buddy.

ok I will send you 0.0001 bitcoin

 

[Jim$ter]

What is Bitcoin mining?

The answer to my question is not there, otherwise someone would have already answered my question freely the first dozen times I asked.

Now I will quote myself again.

no I'm not interested enough to filter the Internet for days trying to find out. That is the job for those who are interested, and then they can defend the project that they are so confident about.

If you don't know, then my question is not for you. If you don't know, then maybe you should be just as questionable. If you do know, then why be so cryptic? Telling me I can use a system of which no one seems to know anything about the very foundation in which it was built. WOW, I mean just WOW!

Clifford: I found this and thought maybe it might give you a better answer to your question about mining:

Bitcoin spenders announce all their transactions to the Bitcoin network. These are picked up by anyone which wishes to participate in verifying Bitcoin transactions - these are called 'miners'. Each miner takes each announced transaction and checks that it both, has right signature and data entries, and has not been seen before (ensuring this is a first-spend); if both pass the transaction is added into the newest 'block' of data. The miner then hashes the block. The one-way hash function is a mathematic function [y = hash(x)], with the special properties that 1) it is easy to compute y given x, but impossible to compute x from y and 2) small changes in x create big and random changes in y. So it is very easy to check that we agree on the outcome of the hash of a particular block, but it is very hard to get a particular hash value. In the Bitcoin protocol, the miners must get a hash for the block below a specified target value; if they don't, they add a random number - called a nonce - to the end of the block and try again. The miners will try billions of possible nonces before they successfully 'mine' the block. As a reward for the verification work, the winning miner gets to include a small transaction to himself - this is the source of the money supply. The new block is announced to all the other miners, who then verify the block and if it follows the rules, the miners all start on the next block. If the other miners think something is wrong, if they think someone is trying to cheat, they will reject the proposed block and continue to mine it for themselves.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Clifford: I found this and thought maybe it might give you a better answer to your question about mining:

That was a much better answer, thank you.

They make it sound as if everyone mines the same transaction for verification. And then the first one to verify is the one that gets credit for mining the transaction. This would explain for all the processing in several machines for one transaction. And would also explain why faster machines are better miners. A bit redundant and highly inefficient, but implements a rat race for speedy services. My tinfoil hat has lost a little weight today and not quite as pointy.

 

[captaincranky]

...[ ].... My tinfoil hat has lost a little weight today and not quite as pointy.

Sorry for not being in lock step with you on this one, Cliff. But every time this topic comes up, mine gets its chinstrap adjusted a bit tighter.

In fact, I just may put another tinfoil hat on top of the one I'm already wearing, after reading this thread.

Now I'm picturing that Bitcoin mining is very similar to a botnet, but with knowing, willing, participants....