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Bitcoin Kiosks Coming To 5 Canadian Cities
dreamstateseven writes "Canadian Bitcoin enthusiasts will be able to exchange Canadian cash for the digital currency through a kiosk that's similar to an ATM. Bitcoiniacs says it has ordered five Bitcoin kiosks from a Las Vegas-based company called RoboCoin and intends to roll them out across Canada in the coming months, with the first machine expected to land in Vancouver in early October. The kiosks allow users to select how much money they would like to spend, insert cash into the machine and then scan a QR code on their phone to transfer the Bitcoins to their wallet."
Wake me up when this happens.
It's interesting that they're willing to sell bitcoins...but not buy them. Sounds to me like they think that bitcoins will lose their value in due course. One could argue that they're only worried about the security implications of an ATM that gives cash in exchange for a digital currency, but if that were the case, then they'd have at least as much to worry about with just handing out bitcoins anyways (which aren't free).
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
these aren't going to be mistaken for ATMs, they take CASH. anyone who puts cash into a machine without knowing what they're doing deserves any risk they involved.
nobody's perfect
Gold, that wonderful investment that will save the world.
What, say that again? You will take my soon to be worthless cash for GOLD! You must be crazy. You yourself told me cash would soon be worthless and GOLD will save the planet from poverty.
It's not fraud at all. They are not making any false promises. They say they will give you bitcoin in exchange for cash, and that is exactly what they do (less a modest commission I'm sure). It's not their fault if you haven't researched Bitcoin at all and get taken out by one of the swings in value.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The real trick here will be to get a two way system of CASH to bitcoins. From a physical untraceable medium of exchange to a digital one.
Many governments of course have a problem with it. We'll see what happens.
I am of two minds about it.
I think the average person should be able to do this sort of thing. I also want the government to be able to track and trace this stuff if they really need to do it.
I guess, I want there to be some way to track it but I want it to be complicated, time consuming, and generally not worth it unless they REALLY want to know. If there were some terrorists going to blow up thousands of people... I'd want there to be a way to stop that. But I generally want to be personally left alone to do what I want.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Until we can donate with Bitcoins how serious should we take all these pro Bitcoin articles if the site itself doesn't trust the technology?
Ho do you fractionalize a Bitcoin?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Forgot the w. So here it is.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Here you go. You should google it while you're still allowed to google stuff.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
My dumbphone can't scan QR codes or run a wallet. How would using Bitcoin help me afford the hundreds of dollars per year that it would cost me or someone else in my situation to upgrade to a smartphone?
I thought it was just Vancouver and Montreal, with nothing but polar bears and bleached reindeer skeletons in between.
am i the only one who thinks, hey lets steal this machine, plug it in at home, break it open and then get unlimited amounts of bitcoins?
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
This should be blocked by the government until Bitcoin is considered a legitimate currency, and therefore held to the same standards and regulations as an actual bank.
These guys should be charged with fraud for this crap. These are not "ATM" machines. What they give out is not an officially recognized currency. What they give out is not even a stable currency (I've seen Bitcoin halve, then double, then halve in value over the span of a few days), and there is NO INSURANCE through the government if the entire thing goes belly up (don't tell me that it won't- that's not the point, I'm insured through the Canadian Government who will cover a small amount of money if something happens to my bank).
The more I think about it, the more I think this is some seriously shady crap. You're basically trying to trick the public into buying into your currency and making them believe it's actually valuable for day-to-day use (it's not for 99% of the consumers). I mean, these machines sure as shit aren't going to have warning labels on the side that say "Hey, the market you're buying into could halve overnight, making your money worth half as much!". How many people actually using these machines are really going to know what they're getting into?
This should be blocked by the government until Bitcoin is considered a legitimate currency, and therefore held to the same standards and regulations as an actual bank.
You have mixed levels here. The "dollar" (Canadian or otherwise) does not count as a bank, and has no standards and regulations imposed directly on the currency itself.
Now, if you want to demand that money-handlers/lenders/changers/etc dealing in BTC live up to similar regulations to those dealing in "real" money, hey, I would agree with you in spirit - Aside from the fact that those dealing in BTC will have a great deal of difficulty complying with AML regulations by design.
But you should at least strive to make a coherent argument, rather than something as absurd as "all cows must get SafeServ certified".
WTF? On my last preview, I didn't have that entire block quote at the top. New "feature" for those of us who would prefer to manually quote what we want to respond to, or just a glitch?
Weird.
Everyone should be able to have it, and eat it too.
Yep, you just hit on what I think is pretty much "key" here.
When you look at all of the (often ridiculous) alt-coins out there on the exchanges, you realize developers can create a new one out of thin air, based on the source code used to design a previous coin, give it a new name, and voila - it's out there.
The truth is though, investors are only buying the things because they're cheap (think "penny stocks" here) and because at least early on, it's possible to buy enough of the sum total of the coins in existence so you can play "pump and dump" schemes -- forcing the price up temporarily with big purchase orders, and cashing in for a tidy little profit when you sell them all off again ASAP.
The online exchanges are more than happy to list these worthless "joke coins" though because they get a cut of each transaction, no matter what happens. As long as someone is willing to put in buy and sell orders, it's worth offering.
Of course, bitcoin has established itself far more than these other alt-coins (perhaps simply the privilege of being first with the idea?), and is actually accepted as currency for a number of goods and services -- but the same thing applies. If you're helping the currency change hands, you're always earning a profit off the top, no matter if the coin's value is headed up or down. It's the best "investment position" of all from the standpoint of safely making a steady profit.
It is an effective model that others have followed sucessfuly. Insert yourself between the consumer and producer ( retail ) and take a share, then you have money for nothing. Is Master Card a currency? It is possible to establish a currency without state support, but that is how they make sure they get their cut. Whether it is fair or not to allow a state to siphon off value by printing money or not, it still remains that they will criminalize any behavior that would reduce that control. PayPal is another example, as well as others who have taken on the task of siphoning off a share of every transaction. I would guess they are stuffing money in the pockets of lobbysist like crazy, while bitcoin is not. It isn''t a dominant strategy, it is very much like an overly complicated barter scheme and companies pay too much to maintain their position at the public trough to allow any freeloaders on their freeloading .
*cough* buy low sell high....
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
So you want to have your cake and eat it too? Welcome to the general mentality of our generation.
The simple truth is that social freedom is not free. It comes with a price. And the opposite of freedom, control, comes with consequences. You either need to be willing to pay the price of freedom, or live with the consequences of control. You can't have both. I wish more people understood that.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The important part about bitcoin isn't that it's digital. That's been done many times. The revolutionary part is that it's decentralized. There is no government, organization, or corporation controlling it. There is no one who can freeze your account. There is no one who can set limits on your account. There is no one who can control who you can send money to. There is no one who can turn up the mint rate and destabilize the market.
There is no one who can freeze your account. There is no one who can set limits on your account. There is no one who can control who you can send money to. There is no one who can turn up the mint rate and destabilize the market.
If only that were true. Ask the users with thousands of dollars stuck in Mt. Gox, or worse, one of the "exchange" or "online wallet" companies that went bust. Sure, you can ship Bitcoins around, but there are serious liquidity problems doing anything with them.
So I need to accept anarchy or despotism?
There is no possibility of having reasonable counter measures to hostile forces AND civil rights?
Give me an f'ing break.
What are you advocating for here? Mass human enslavement? Or are you advocating for the dissolution of human society itself?
Reevaluate your argument. Its irrational and politically counter productive.
In the words of my generation... your comment is retarded. Try again.
Before you presume to be offended, I'll point out you came off as hostile to me without any provocation from me. So I'd ask you to take this rebuke as fair turnabout.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
http://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size
looks unsustainable to me
from:
http://blockchain.info/charts
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Encryption is totally cracked
What the fuck are you talking about? All encryption, ever? Or just Bitcoin encryption? Do you know what "cracked" means in this context?
which is totally what she said
You mean the ~$50 it costs to buy a used phone off craigslist and use it as a portable computing device with no phone service
I own such a portable computing device: an Archos 43 Internet Tablet. But I thought one needed cellular data service in order to have a data connection with which to act on the information in the scanned QR code. Or is there a procedure that allows scanning the QR code, waiting several minutes to an hour to find a Wi-Fi connection, and then acting on the scan?
It's ok people were initially scared of paper money too :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
There's a difference between the situation you describe and the situation I describe. Even once the kiosks do come to your country, they'd be useless to tablet users unless they're in an area with open Wi-Fi.
I'm guessing he was referring to this. Why he thinks the NSA needs access to his bank account.. I don't know.
which is totally what she said
And we (the bitcoin users) LIKE it that way! No meddling gov't to ruin the fun!
Granted, I play with bitcoin as a hobby. If my wallet was compromised tomorrow, it wouldn't be all THAT terrible. There's not much there.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
I pay for things with TimBits all the time.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
they don't need to. but their working plan is to vaccuum everything into their dbs in that datacenter in Utah, and keep it on record in case they ever want to inspect it, for example, if they're inspecting somebody else and they want to go three or four hops out from their aquaintances (remember 6 degrees of separation...). So yeah, they're going to grab the data and then look at it later with no notification, warrant, probable cause, or oversight. Maybe my donation to EFF will throw a red flag and get me on the no fly list, so the TSA can grab my junk then eject me from the line. This is how the dominos fall.
speaking of suspicious, why would anybody need to use bitcoin? surely for nefarious, possibly terrorist purposes. remember, there are two kinds of citizens: terrorists and potential terrorists.
btdubs everything we learned about NSA applies to GCHQ (the british NSA) as well - they're besties and share all their tricks and secrets.
Lastly, three months ago I would have said that these ideas were tin foil hat nut job conspiracies. But post-snowden, all bets are off. it's all been published in NYT, WaPo, and Guardian - newspapers of record.
I'm not advocating anything, I'm not an idealist. And I'll apologize for appearing hostile. It wasn't my intent.
To elaborate, I'm not claiming your only choices are anarchy or despotism, I'm just stating that you can either have real freedom, or you can have governance... you can't have both. Sure, you can try to fumble around with a complicated system of trusts and balances but it will eventually, and always, gradually atrophy into abuse by those in power and apathy by the complacent public.
If you give the governing powers any control over our medium of trade, any what-so-ever, the best you can hope for is a false sense of security that they are trustworthy. That's what we've had in the past, that's what we have now, and that's what we'd have in the future.
It's nice to think you can have the best of both worlds, but when it comes to a governing body of humans controlling a product or system that is necessary for civilization, you never can. That's just a simple and unfortunate truth that I feel should be evident to everyone. No insult intended.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
i still need to know how to INVEST in bitcoins.
alive to the universe, dead to the world
Your definition of real freedom appears to be anarchy and your definition of governance appears to be unrestrained unlimited government peonage.
I do not see how you can make the argument that I can only have one of those two options.
What's more, anarchy is self defeating. So you're really saying I have no choice but peonage. I will resist that.
What I want is for them to have enough authority to deal with extreme situations but for the power to be awkward enough that it won't be used in anything but extreme circomstances.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
might be good for many people, but my bank, which is a national chain, doesn't charge me to use its ATM or those of its affiliates. but having bitcoin value drop a large percentage in a short time is the same as middleman, though if you acquire them at the right time you get super interest.....well, too crazy for me.
oh I am scared of paper money/mainstream digital money, but its the only game in town.