“The Community” Will Bust Your Balls If You Don’t Listen To Them And Break Your Bank Account If You Do

Kijiji Robocoin 1

NEW BITCOIN ATM MACHINE FOR SALE. NEVER BEEN USED, STILL IN ORIGINAL SHIPPING CARTON. READY FOR SHIPPING ANYWHERE IN CANADA. PERFECT FOR USE IN RESTAURANTS, CAFE’S, CASINO’S. FOR MORE INFO CALL SCOTT AT 604-828-9559

In ancient history times for Bitcoin, or just 365 days ago on the calendar, Bitcoin ATMs were all the rage. “The Community” was frothing with excitement at the prospect of bringing Bitcoin to the people with little grey boxes installed on every street corner where interested parties could pump in their fiat and withdraw their crypto. It sounded so delightfully simple, so wonderfully accessible, and so right that it probably drew more attention to Bitcoin than anything other than Mt Gox.

Of course, attention, like popularity, is entirely unrelated to the “to the moon” meme. The impact of ATMs has been inconsequential and has failed to enrich either its supporters, “The Community,” or the machine’s operators. Most of these machines, if not all of them, just sit there, collecting dust and taking up real estate, while the bulk of transactions happen OTC, just like they always have.

So today, we have online ad descriptions (cached) like the one you see above, where the seller is pleading at the top of his ALL CAPS lungs for salvation from the burden of the ever-so-wise crowd. “The Community,” in all its prescient glory, didn’t foresee that these magic machines would

1) Fail to interest those already uninterested in Bitcoin,
2) Not work as advertised,i
3) Require anything less than a fortress to protect them, and
4) Accomplish anything other than tying one’s biometric identity to one’s coins.

So now, for pennies on the dollar,ii you can have a piece of Bitcoin history – a momento to that short window of time when merchant adoption, ATMs, and the Redditard community appeared to have any impact on Bitcoin whatsoever. As an added bonus, you get to help one of these optimistic operators recover some of his capital. Just don’t remind him how much his $20k would be worth if he’d just bought Bitcoin instead.iii

So make an offer, take it home, toss it in your man-cave next to Contra and Pacman, and let this big grey box serve as your constant reminder about the difference between “communities” and shepherds.

 

 

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  1. Nor even deliver as advertised. Multi-month delays, particularly from Robocoin, are well-documented. Reliability has also been a significant issue with these machines. What wallet inspector?
  2. Offers of less than 10% of the $20k MSRP have apparently already been made and (so far) rejected, so if you’re going to step up, you’ll have to do a bit better.
  3. Funny how “The Community” also advocates for other shit that does the exact fucking opposite of what they imagine it does, like spending coins, encouraging the VC charades, etc. when holding coins and encouraging VCs to buy BTC instead of tossing it into a black hole of stupidity is the +EV strategy.

18 thoughts on ““The Community” Will Bust Your Balls If You Don’t Listen To Them And Break Your Bank Account If You Do

    • Pete D. says:

      From that article:

      BTC buyers are outpacing the sellers and the UBA is filling up with cash. What can it do to attract more sellers? At this point the UBA should raise the price of bitcoins. Since it is currently holding 10% more cash than intended, perhaps it should raise prices by 10% in an attempt to attract more sellers? If the sellers do not show up immediately, it can continue to increase the price periodically, perhaps every hour during business hours, until the sellers show up.

      This is essentially just a live market, or would soon reduce to one, and is therefore no different than Satoshi Square as practised in NYC, etc. No machine can predict and adjust prices better than a human can. There’s no AI that competent, no matter how much magic pixie dust you sprinkle on your grey box. Pretty much this entire UBA thing is predicated on super=duper-AI and the notion that a BTC-fiat exchange is some kind of happenin’ place.

      Anyways, if this is such a foolproof idea, why haven’t we seen it tried out? It seems to me that online marketplaces are a lot more efficient than physical ones, which is really what Bitcoin’s all about, removing the need for physicality and geography. Once you’re in and you see how free and flexible life can be, you’ll be inclined to stay in. Those with the trading bug will therefore find themselves on purely digital platforms, whether that’s MPEx, BitBet, or something else.

  1. cazalla says:

    Speaking of ATMs, CoinDesk reports Lamassu

    “has released new data with the aim of illustrating how its core product is proving profitable for owners.”

    and

    “Lamassu’s survey estimated that its operators earn between $1,000–$3,000 each month on an average commission of 5.5%. This equates to annual earnings for ATM operators of between $12,000 and $36,000 per unit.”

    Lamassu twitter feed confirm the story, but I look for the released data and it is nowhere to be found. So, I contact Lamassu by email and twitter and yet, no response as to where this released data can actually be found.

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