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In Vancouver, the easiest way to get your hands on bitcoins is to head down to the world's first such ATM at Waves Coffee House (100-900 Howe Street).

East of the Rockies, people in Edmonton will soon have another convenient way to obtain some of the digital currency: a Bitcoin gift card.

Today (January 13), Alberta's Bitcoin Ventures Inc. announced the launch of CoinTap. The card will debut on Wednesday (January 15) at Remedy Café (10279 Jasper Avenue) in downtown Edmonton.

"CoinTap is the first Bitcoin gift card ever to go on sale in retails stores in Canada," company president Ashley Fulks said in a news release.

Selling for $55.50, one of these cards will get a holder $50 in bitcoins (at the market rate) when it's redeemed on the CoinTap website. Bitcoin Ventures plans to limit redemptions to $1,000 in cards per day.

The company's release states: "Bitcoin is a payment network that runs on the Internet. It generates and uses bitcoins as a currency, which can be exchanged for Canadian dollars, Euros, Rubbles, gold or virtually any other kind of money."

One bitcoin was trading for US$923.10 on the MtGox exchange at time of writing.