Last week I bought 0.00201824 of a bitcoin in a convenience store.



Last week I bought 0.00201824 of a bitcoin in a convenience store.

The first bitcoin ATM in Richmond was installed on May 1st in the back room of the D Express Deli, which is located at 2001A Venable St.

It was easier than I expected. To use a bitcoin ATM, you first need to download a free bitcoin wallet app, to store the coins you’ve bought or hold those you plan to sell. The wallet is connected to your phone number, so to access your account on an ATM you simply enter your cell number and then punch in the confirmation code that is texted to you. The app provides you with a QR code that’s linked to your wallet’s digital address, so when the ATM scans the QR code it connects to your digital wallet.

When I visited the D Express Deli, I spent one crisp dollar bill on the bitcoins that I bought from Bitexpress.

Bitexpress is the company that installed and operates the ATM in Richmond, in addition to five other locations from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. They buy their Satoshi1 model machines from Genesis, a bitcoin ATM producer, and search for profitable locations to place them in.

“We’ll pick a store with the best qualities overall, the best location and the best hours, and then we’ll just install the ATM and they’ll get a monthly fee for having the ATM in their store” said John Haskins, managing partner of Bitexpress.

It’s Haskins job to visit local Mom & Pop businesses and find out if they are interested in having a bitcoin ATM. He is also responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of every Bitexpress ATM, and it is his phone number stamped across the machines in case tech support is needed.

According to Haskins, local businesses can benefit from having a Bitexpress ATM not only because they are paid for the use of their store space, but because the ATMs generate interest in the store itself.

“Bitcoin ATMS are still pretty rare, so there tends to be a lot of press like this that gets generated for that store in particular,” said Haskins. “They’ll usually get additional customers from that.”

Bitexpress approached Zein Bensidi-Brahim, owner of the D Express Deli, some months ago and proposed installing a machine in his convenience store. Though he did not understand the concept of bitcoins, Bensidi-Brahim consented in hopes of generating some extra money.

“Lots of people feel happy when they see the machine here” said Bensidi-Brahim. “They come looking for it.”

After the bitcoin ATM came online, The D Express Deli did experience a slight escalation of foot traffic by enthusiastic techies eager to try it out. However, Bensidi-Brahim said that he hasn’t had any increase in business for his store because people who come looking for the bitcoin machine walk right past his products and make a bee-line for the ATM.

The limited appeal of a bitcoin ATM could be due to the fact that bitcoins are not widely understood by the public. A 2015 study by Goldman Sachs found that over 50 percent of millennials had never used and didn’t plan to use bitcoins. However, the same study showed that of the 27 percent who had used bitcoins, the overwhelming majority plan to use it again.

This could suggest that disinterest in cyber-currency stems more from ignorance and inexperience than from dissatisfaction with the technology.

Peter B. (not his real name) is a long-time user of bitcoin, and he’s been mining them since before most people even heard of them. Bitcoins are algorithms, strings of code, and because not all of them have been found, people like Butner can use their computer’s Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) to “mine” bitcoins from the internet. The prospect of finding free money is becoming progressively more difficult for people like Peter because the number of undiscovered bitcoins is steadily decreasing while the number of professional servers searching for them increases.

Professional bitcoin companies buy up coins from people like Butner who discover them, and they are eventually sold to the masses through systems like bitcoin ATMs.

“Easier access to bitcoins, I think, is always a good thing,” Peter said. “The only value to bitcoin is people’s faith in it, so the more people that believe in it the better off it’s doing.”

Bitexpress is just one of many emerging bitcoin ATM operating companies that have jumped on the cyber-currency trend. The first bitcoin ATM went live in October 2013, according to Coin ATM Radar. Since then, bitcoin ATMs have spread and today 670 are operational in the world.