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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.
Good heavens never saw that one coming!
I think a general rule of thumb is that once you hit 5 digits of price, a test drive is never too much to ask.
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.
That's really just a subset of an even more general rule of thumb, "a fool and his money are soon parted".
Log in or piss off.
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?
What's the energy cost to physically produce a bitcoin? Anybody know?
With a Butterfly Labs' Monarch (700GH/s)), at a difficulty of 19,729,645,941 and a block reward of 25...
655 kWh per BTC, on average, or roughly one third of the current USD:BTC exchange rate in power costs.
Do you like it when libertarians chuckle at your "socialist paradise" when the government screws up? It's a straw man argument.