Time will tell if this was a Good Decision or not. A Baltimore bar has installed a
BitCoin ATM. Thanks to Fred Michaelson for sending this Baltimore Sun article. -Editor
A company that plans to install as many as 100 bitcoin ATMs by
year's end installed the region's first of the machines Monday night at Fells Point bar Bad
Decisions. More are planned for Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and
Amtrak stations, Wal-Marts and 7-Eleven stores around the region.
While usage of bitcoin is still low — even at establishments like Bad Decisions, a well-known
early adopter of technology and social media — advocates hope the ATMs will make it easier for
technophiles to give bitcoin a try.
"It's going to be an easy entry point for consumers to actually get bitcoins,"
said Josh Riddle, CEO and co-founder of Bitsie, a Baltimore startup that works with
brick-and-mortar stores to help them accept bitcoin payments.
Otherwise, the virtual currency exists solely online. A public ledger system tracks who owns
which bitcoins, each of which was worth about $380 as of Monday. Most bitcoin users get them by
buying them on one of a host of online exchanges, or by accepting them for goods or services being
sold. Bitcoin "miners" generate new bitcoins by helping to process and verify bitcoin
transactions.
Bitcoin ATMs allow users to quickly use cash to buy bitcoins or to turn their bitcoins into
bills. There are only about two dozen around the country; until Monday, the closest ones to
Baltimore were in New York, Chapel Hill, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
The North Carolina-based company Coin Outlet installed the machine at Bad Decisions, a logical
choice because it is the site of a regular meetup of bitcoin enthusiasts, Coin Outlet CEO Eric
Grill said. But the plan is to go well beyond the bar — Coin Outlet has a relationship with Locant
Services, a company that operates kiosks for payphones, ATMs and other services at 100,000
locations across the country.
Grill said the ATMs are intended both to expose a wider audience to bitcoins, and to offer it as
a cheaper and easier alternative for buying bitcoins.
To read the complete article, see:
Cryptocurrency
meets cash at new bitcoin ATM in Fells Point
(www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-bitcoin-atm-20141020-story.html)
Wayne Homren, Editor
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