In March of this year the price leapfrogged in a 30-day span by 30 percent to exceed $58,000. A decade ago the still-new bitcoin was priced under $6. Growth for everybody has jumped as the price of digital currencies has zoomed. 2 in the industry behind Coin Depot, based in Atlanta. There are now 16,250 cryptocurrency ATMs spread around the U.S., with CoinFlip ranked No. An ATM format, they figured, would bring digital currencies to the masses. The co-founders got the idea for their business five years ago when they noticed that bitcoins, still a hobby for many at the time, were growing in popularity but still inaccessible for many investors wishing to buy in. "People for 20 years have been saying that cash is dying, but it's not true," he says. It may seem ironic that a digital currency can be acquired only with cash, but Weiss is unapologetic. How does CoinFlip work? Customers carry accounts, or digital wallets, in their own names and trade in bitcoins or other currencies-with 90 percent of all transactions comprising deposits taken in cash only. "New York has been a very hard place to get an ATM license," Weiss says. In the early going, business owners were skeptical about the technology and slow to yield floor space to CoinFlip, but now its business has taken off, with some 330 new machines, all produced in the Czech Republic by a manufacturer known as General Bytes, going into the market each month.ĪTM licenses are pending in New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, the only states remaining beyond CoinFlip's reach. From a standing start of 10 ATMs five years ago, the company's network has grown to more than 2,000 machines in 47 states, with most of them in convenience stores, liquor shops and gas stations, often adjacent to ordinary ATMs. CoinFlip, legally known as GPD Holdings, owns and manages ATMs that deal in a half-dozen digital currencies, though bitcoin consumes 90 percent of all company transactions.
0 kommentar(er)
