I've never seen a Bitcoin ATM that didn't have multiple warnings about fraud and scams. I also see similar warnings at store checkouts and near the gift cards.
Somehow people still fall for the scams. As long as the scammers are able to keep victims panicked, no amount of warnings will help.
That's a cop-out. Transferring money out of the country from a normal ATM is impossible, meaning the money is usually recoverable. If the people operating the Bitcoin ATMs had to share liability, their actions would help you quickly understand that warnings aren't enough.
I’ve never seen one with warnings, but it really comes back to the way Bitcoin has no safeguards built in. Scammers love it because once they get someone to make a mistake, there’s no way to reverse it unlike a conventional bank or most other payment systems. Gift card fraud is riskier (they can be locked, someone has to physically move things around & risk being caught, conversion to real money incurs a fair loss, etc.) but it’s popular because it was the best option before cryptocurrency came along and offered a fully remote alternative.
In Japan, the elderly were getting scammed so hard they started putting cell phone jammers in ATMs (traditional bank ones) since the scammers were guiding them through using the ATM to make a wire transfer
It's zany that the Bitcoin ATM ecosystem even exists.
We generally don't sell speculative investments at the Kwik-e-Mart. There's no Charles Schwab kiosk next to the hot dog roller. The clerk doesn't ask if I want municipal bonds with my dubious boner pills and Lucky Strikes. The closest thing I can even imagine is forex, and even then, outside of limited trading in Pesos at the Mexican border, that's still "visit the bank and we'll call you back in a week when the envelope full of notes arrives."
Can someone describe what the legitimate market niche it serves? I'd expect that if you're in a situation where you want to use crypto as an investment, or to facilitate non-scam transactions, you have access to the Internet and non-cash payment systems, so you could use a regular exchange.
My guess is that it evolved out of the localbitcoins mindset, and more generally "people who assume typical blockchain is way more private than it is"-- because feeding cash into a kiosk without a formal KYC process is less documented than opening a Coinbase account.
The bitcoin atms follow kyc. You have to have an account with a verified identity. Examining the exchange rates offered by these ATMs and the fact that the customers are insensitive to the rates offered by these services will illuminate why these have proliferated.
I co founded one of the largest Bitcoin ATM network. You'll be surprised how many times people lied when we warned them that it can potentially be a scam. THere are multiple warning on the machine screen and outside but victims are hypnotized.
7 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] threadSomehow people still fall for the scams. As long as the scammers are able to keep victims panicked, no amount of warnings will help.
We generally don't sell speculative investments at the Kwik-e-Mart. There's no Charles Schwab kiosk next to the hot dog roller. The clerk doesn't ask if I want municipal bonds with my dubious boner pills and Lucky Strikes. The closest thing I can even imagine is forex, and even then, outside of limited trading in Pesos at the Mexican border, that's still "visit the bank and we'll call you back in a week when the envelope full of notes arrives."
Can someone describe what the legitimate market niche it serves? I'd expect that if you're in a situation where you want to use crypto as an investment, or to facilitate non-scam transactions, you have access to the Internet and non-cash payment systems, so you could use a regular exchange.
My guess is that it evolved out of the localbitcoins mindset, and more generally "people who assume typical blockchain is way more private than it is"-- because feeding cash into a kiosk without a formal KYC process is less documented than opening a Coinbase account.