The craze for buying Bitcoin seems to be on a never-ending surge and unlike in the past, when you just had the online exchanges to buy them, now there’s another option and a better one – the Bitcoin ATM. It’s fair to say that till the Bitcoin ATMs had come into the market, the online exchanges fulfilled the need for a platform where Bitcoin could be bought and sold. Well, the exchanges are still in operation and let’s not wish them away just yet. They may not be in a position to compete with the ATMs in many respects but they have their advantages intact as an online platform. You can never rule out possibilities of convergence in future with larger scope of benefits.
Emergence of the Bitcoin ATM
Cryptocurrency had first emerged as an online product and it came on the back of an oversized technological footprint – blockchain. Those who understood it were happy to make transactions online but those who couldn’t understand it were not so sure. Things moved a little too fast and at some point it caused a disruption in the traditional currency markets the world over.
As expected, restrictions and controls came into force and cryptocurrency had its first reality check. The emergence of the Bitcoin ATM is a likely outcome of the need for cryptocurrency to acquire a secure offline identity wherein some patrons could relate with it more easily.
What is it like to operate the Bitcoin ATM?
There’s a need for everything that is useful and there’s also a threshold where their utility diminishes. The same holds true for both the ATMs and the online exchanges. To begin with, Bitcoin ATMs are not open platform marketplaces like the online exchanges where they know the user’s identity and bank details.
In a Bitcoin ATM, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a bank account or a credit card. You can use cash to buy Bitcoin from the ATM. You just have to share the bare minimum personal information to do a transaction on the Bitcoin ATM. If you are averse to registering and opening an account to do the transaction, the Bitcoin ATM is ideal for you.
In transaction time, ATMs steal a march over exchanges
The most remarkable aspect of doing a transaction on a Bitcoin ATM is the speed at which your transaction is completed. It doesn’t take longer than a couple of minutes for a transaction to get over. Simple consumer psychology indicates that nobody likes to wait too long to receive a commodity after making the payment.
The Bitcoin ATM has found a solution to the most glaring problem that online exchanges face, which is, unusually long transaction approval processes. It sometimes takes up to a week for the Bitcoins to come into a buyer’s wallet and usually it takes up to 3 days. That’s unacceptable delay for an online platform.
As a new offline facility, the Bitcoin ATMs cannot match the ubiquity of online exchanges but they are growing in numbers at a very fast pace. Both the ATMs and the exchanges have their respective utility but it is true that the exchanges will have to seriously look into their transactional delays and improve data security. Meanwhile Bitcoin ATMs are rocking the world of cryptocurrency.