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The Great Robocoin Rip-off
FhnuZoag writes: Last year, Andrew Wilkinson, founder of MetaLab, bought a Robocoin Bitcoin ATM, figuring it would be a fun little side project and a good way to help move Bitcoin forward. It did not quite turn out that way. He has now written a timeline of the 10-month, $25,000(CAD) struggle. In short: there was a massive shipping delay, a $2,000 charge to clear customs, no knowledge base, unhelpful support, and the ATM itself flat out didn't work.
by butterfly labs??? that would explain it
Good heavens never saw that one coming!
Trendy overhyped thing turns out to be utter fucking shite. Film at 11.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Anything involving software costing more than $0.99 is bound to disappoint.
That's life on the bleeding edge.
should of just put pinball games in the bar.
With a good game you can make both make money and games in bars is very big right now.
Anything called "Robo" as in ROBerCoin should be telling just from the label.
That's unpossible!
Look at that Jordan guy. Just look at him. Are you fucking kidding me? With a haircut like that, you know he's a vacuous retard.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Reading the chat logs just pisses me off. WiFi losing connection, power getting turned off.. Is it so fucking hard to get a CAT cable hidden and tucked away and to pay someone not to turn the damn power off if you spent 20K already?
Hyper agro tech support guy? You made yourself look like an amature.
I can't vouch for the quality of their products or service, but I know Robocoin is one of the leading Bitcoin ATM manufacturers. According to Coin ATM Radar, there currently are 44 Robocoin ATMs operational worldwide, in the United States, the UK, Canada, Spain, Japan,... Robocoin provided the very first Bitcoin ATM machine in the world, in October 2013 in Vancouver, Canada.
They are currently ranked 2nd, after Lamassu with 90 ATMs. But the Lamassu ATMs are mostly smaller and cheaper one-way machines (cash to Bitcoin), although they do sell a two-way solution now.
On Coin ATM Radar, a total of 267 operational Bitcoin ATMs are registered at the moment.
Is it just me, or is there a deluge of unsympathetic ridicule heading this guy's way?
Wow, looking at those bitcoin ATM maps (http://coinatmradar.com/), it looks like these kiosks are charging a 5.5% fee for conversion into "fiat" currency. That's a huge forex spread, and amounts to an enormous ATM fee.
What's the energy cost to physically produce a bitcoin? Anybody know?
One persons large spread on a conversion, is another persons bargain on laundering.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
To be fair, the only thing I can see "wrong" with what the support guy did was that he wasn't apologetic. Outside of that, he seemed attentive, persistent and adaptable. If I were trying to remote troubleshoot some hardware and the internet kept cutting off and the people I was trying to work with kept leaving early or showing up late, I would probably have been hard pressed to act as calmly as Frank did.
I tried to find the nearest robocoin kiosk to see if it was possible to witness one of these things in person. The nearest one is in "Los Angeles" California. More specifically it is at this Latitude and Longitude 3646'41.7"N 11925'04.6"W which is along a desolate road with no name that runs along side the King River 20 miles outside of Fresno.
I was hoping for a bar or some other urban public space.
I really don't want to run into Jordan Kelley or anyone from his company in the middle of the desert with no witnesses.
when libertarians get treated the way they'd treat others in a libertarian utopia.
Caveat emptor.
The way bitcoin was originally designed (and should still react, barring the surging/bucking from mining vendors shoving their 'new stock' online for a couple days to 'test', before shipping them out to customers when they're no longer profitable) is to scale evenly with energy cost. So however much it would cost you to run a current gen cpu/gpu/asic is about how much energy you need to spend to generate a coin.
When I did it with an OpenCL capable GPU a couple years back the amount coincided exactly with the calculated energy cost over the winter. The only reason it wasn't a 'waste of electricity' is because it was done during a period where it provided heat that otherwise would've been produced by a heater and thus was either 'free money' or 'free heating' depending on how you look at it.
That said: It was back when BTC were 10 dollars apiece, the difficulty was like 3 million, and Mt Gox was still a respected industry player (haha).
While I don't have specific numbers, I assume current-gen hardware at the current difficulty numbers probably coincides to a similiar valuation up until the point where newer energy efficient models are produced, then there's a rapid jump in profitability for a few months until saturation takes place and then back to unprofitability.
Blame the victim? Really?
One gets that idea from some of the nasty posts here.
Look, the man tried to buy a widget. Widget supplier is a con man. Supplier takes the money, then takes as long as possible to provide anything useful. When buyer tries to return non-working pile of garbage, weasel supplier gives 16 lines of BS about why he can't return buyer's money.
Wilkinson was a LOT more patient than I would have been.
"leading bitcoin ATM manufacturers"? LOL. Is that like the leading slashdot beta ux guru?
ATM means Ass To Mouth, by the way.
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I blew $25k on a hobby and it didn't work out. LIFE IS SO HORRIBLE!!!!!11
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Who pays full price for something like this up front?! Across an international border?! I would never sign T&C's without some recourse for a non-functioning product. Things like paying customs and shipping, installation and support costs, that's all divvied up ahead of time.
Wanting 100% cash up front is just not how business is done. You might pay some portion of it, but you never shell out the whole price unless you have some other leverage. Especially on something that is months out. In this case Robocoin had all the leverage. Even if they did ship a functioning ATM, they could flip a kill switch any time they wanted. I would have paid at most 30% up front, written proof of functionality prior to shipment, some payment at time of shipment, some payment at time of installation, and withhold a symbolic 5-10% for at least 30 days to make sure all the bugs are worked out.
OT - I'm no deletionist, but I was a wee bit surprised to see Mr. Wilkinson's company had a Wikipedia article. Seems like this guy might just be after some limelight.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2jakg4/the_great_robocoin_ripoff_how_we_lost_25000/cla6b7d
People who want to do something first should expect a bumpy ride. Having to pay $10k more is part of the word "pioneer". Pioneers clear the path for the masses.
Jordan is operating on a shoestring, paying in advance (with his customers' money) for units he intends to modify with his own code, then ship to customers. The results are not surprising.
There's no reason whatsoever to mine more of them for the system to be successful. A finite supply would be perfectly acceptable.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Shouldn't the transaction to purchase a Bitcoin ATM be conducted in Bitcoin.
I have never understood the point of using a Bitcoin ATM versus buying through an exchange like Coinbase. It just seems like a gimmick. Why would someone on the street need to convert between fiat and cryptocurrency? If you have cash wouldn't you just pay with your cash?
Bitcoin's great for storing and transferring value. No one can take your coins without your private key and you can do international transfers yourself. Purchasing with Bitcoin, on the other hand, is not terribly practical. Not many vendors accept it compared to fiat and the confirmation times are way too long for in-person purchases.
Those guys would have been much better off spending their time and money creating Bitcoin wagering games playable over the Internet.
It's my right to run around Texas if I have Ebola because the government engineered the virus to kill us and is trying to cover it up! Now pardon me while I go out and drown the government in a bathtub and then form my own corporate banking monopoly to earn an extra bit of bitcoin on the side so I can buy guns and cigarette paper and an eighth without the government taking the green hit off my doob.
There's no reason whatsoever to mine more of them for the system to be successful. A finite supply would be perfectly acceptable.
There is a finite supply of them. No more than 21 million will be mined. However the mining still needs to continue after that point. Mining is how the blockchain is secured.
However, money is also an instrument of change.
Your "argument" could just as well be applied to almost anything. From excrement to cars.
Same as it could be turned around and broken by "proving" that money is an instrument of status quo.
Cause if it were not so, how do the wealthy remain wealthy, become wealthier and pass on that wealth to their offspring.
Both would be nonsense.
It is a tool.
Only we pass around tokens we confuse for money so we give it more material value and imagine it more real than say... mathematics.
Which is itself a tool one needs to be able to use the tool of money properly.
Hammer to money's nail.
It should not be a surprise that the big corporate stores are suffering from things like showrooming because they don't offer much added value to justify their costs.
Then you've never met a skillful salesman I presume.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yes I understand that you hold this opinion.
...calling statements and facts "just opinions".
Self-immolating their own intellect in exchange for the false coin of the last desperate attempt to clutch at pride.
"Better all that is said be mere opinions, and thus an equation and a squiggle and a hard-earned fact be of same value, including such works of mine - than for ME to wrong.
Let NOTHING be wrong then, for all is mere thought and nothing is of real value."
Childish.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I saw a bitcoin-type ATM near Harvard Square, in Cambridge, MA, at a building called "The Garage" (bunch of shops and eateries). I've never seen anyone actually use it, though. It's the only one in the city I've seen. I was suspicious of it :-)
You can call me all the names you want, it wont change the fact that you are the one who is pretending that a rational person can't have different values or come to different rational conclusions than you.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
And ignoring factual isn't even rational. That's called delusional.
Also, you're the one engaging in intellectual sophistry, still hiding behind "It is all just opinions. I know nothing and neither do you, for what can be truly known..."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens