Despite the fall in the prices of the virtual currency, the installation and use of Bitcoin ATMs has skyrocketed in recent months, with at least five new installations and / or uses per day.
Since the beginning of the year, the king of cryptoactives has lost more than 50% of its value, falling from USD $ 17,400 to around USD $ 8,000 today. It could go even further if the waves of negative feelings and FUD means continue, and the crypto-butchery spreads throughout the market, since all the altcoins seem to blindly follow the path of Bitcoin.
However, a group seems to have benefited from the fall in bitcoin prices and is the Bitcoin ATM provider. According to Coinatmradar.com, the installations of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency machines have skyrocketed in recent months.
At the time of writing this piece, the global total is 2,177 Bitcoin ATMs. About 43% of those machines also support other altcoins. On average, 5 ATM Bitcoin locations (BTM) arise every day, and 136 were installed during the market correction. In 2017, the number of Bitcoin ATMs doubled from 954 on January 1 to 2,028 on January 1, 2018.
The United States leads the way with 1,296 machines in total. Canada ranks second with 340, and the United Kingdom is the third with 108. Although Japan and Asia dominate the volume of world trade, the continent only has 47 BTM, which is only 2.16% of the overall total . The additional convenience of using a machine is obviously a great attraction, but it has a price. The average purchase rate is 10.17%, while its sale is 7.13%, so it is not the most profitable way to use Bitcoin. Other alternatives, such as Ethereum or Litecoin, have much lower rates and may outperform Bitcoin in the future.
Due to the growing regulations, many BTM providers are incorporating identification features in their machines. Operators may choose to disable those functions, but they are often required to use them. Anonymous use is available in some places, but generally at least one phone number is required.