An Australian state broadcaster has informed its listeners that a company by the name Australian Bitcoin ATMs will place as much as 100 shiny new crypto ATMs.
If ABC (name of the radio station) can be believed, then Bitcoin exchange machines would be distributed evenly in the country. The CEO of the company Chris Guzowski has reassured the listeners, that Bitcoin trade would available both ways: either one would be able to sell digital coins through the use of foreign exchanges or throw in some hard cash to acquire crypto instead.
Although, to this moment there is no fully reliable source of information, judging by the machine showed on ABAs web page, these ATMs are the production of Robocoin.
Site also describes a curious registration process which consists of three steps; “wave” – the scanner puts biometric data of your hand into the system, “scan” – ATM verifies your government issued ID (probably a passport or an ID card) and created a profile to use in the system, “smile” – machine uses a pattern matching algorithm to compare your face and ID picture.
The placing of the ATMs seems like a great step to promote crypto, but there are counter opinions to that.
For example, David Glance, associate professor and director at the Centre for Software Practice (University of Western Australia) thinks that Bitcoin ATMs would not help the public acceptance of cryptocurrency on their own. A lot of effort is needed as well as the support from a large bank, which would provide “make it simple, stupid” access to the digital coins. David believes that cryptocurrency occupies its niche and won’t leave it in any foreseeable future.
Speaking of support, actually National Australia Bank has already done some major steps towards helping cryptomovement. In August 2013 there was a massive hit for the Australian crypto enthusiasts when a CoinJar ceased to exist, taking down with it all the user accounts and associated businesses. NAB decided to intervene and provided help on the damage control.
NAB even published a research paper where Bitcoin was pretty highly acclaimed. Although the paper authors would not call digital coins a currency, they do agree on the fact of Bitcoin having the properties of one: portability, durability etc.
Even though the Bitcoin received good recommendations from NAB, on the official side of the deal nothing is certain yet. The governmental regulators has not given any comments, not counting in the standard warning by the central bank’s governor on the speculative nature of digital currency but I guess we’ve seen a lot of these lately.
What about do you have Bitcoin ATMs in your country? Maybe a project like Australian Bitcoin ATMs has already come to your hometown. We here at Cointelegraph would really appreciate you sharing with us your experience, as well as your thoughts on the subject.