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10 Nov 2013
Press reports called it a Bitcoin ATM, but it's really a vending machine: you put in money and it sells you Bitcoins, or (in theory at least) vice versa. The machine has a largish touch screen on the left, with slots below that accept and dispense cash. On the right is a QR code reader, a palm reader, a device I didn't use, and at the bottom a ticket printer. Before you can use the machine, you have to set up an account identified by your palm print, apparently because the government limits transactions to $3000 per user per day. You put your hand into the palm reader 5 or 6 times until it has an adequate set of images. Then it asks for an optional e-mail addreess and tells you to come back later while it sets up an account and, presumably checks your palm print to be sure you're not a known bad guy. About five minute later I got the e-mail telling me I was approved. To buy bitcoins, you authenticate with a palm print, then tell it how much you want to buy. I bought the minumum $20. It asked if I had a Bitcoin wallet, and since I didn't, it made one and printed out a ticket with a QR code for the wallet. Then I fed in a $20 bill, and it sold me 0.08042383 Bitcoins which it transferred to the wallet on the ticket. If I'd had a wallet already, I could have scanned a QR code from a wallet app or typed in the wallet's serial number, and it would have transferred them to that wallet.
A Bitcoin wallet on a piece of paper, although fairly secure, doesn't enable any transactions, like buying a cup of coffee, so on that trip I used my Mastercard instead, a payment process which took about 5 seconds to stick the card into the reader and enter my PIN. I did come back later and buy coffee with Bitcoins, but that's the next installment.
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