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.
___ ___ ___
- 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?↩
- 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.↩
- 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.↩