Send Bitcoins from an ATM Directly to a Hardware Wallet

Bitcoin ATMs make buying bitcoins easy and fast. Bitcoins purchased from Bitcoin ATMs are delivered to the recipient in one of several ways:

a private key printed on receipt paper;

encrypted with user given password a private key is sent by email;

to a Bitcoin address provided by user and scanned at the machine before payment.

What if, however, you want to deliver your bitcoins directly to a bitcoin hardware wallet? Hardware wallets don’t have screens and require software to interact with the device. So how can you send bitcoins from an ATM directly to your hardware wallet?

Mobile HD Watch-only Wallets

Using a mobile wallet like Mycelium or Sentinel, you can import your hardware wallet HD seed onto your mobile device. This allows you to view your hardware wallet addresses and accept payments to your hardware wallet from your phone. There will be no need to even carry or bring the hardware wallet with you to the ATM.

Finding your Hardware Wallet HD Seed

Your HD seed can be found using the software wallet currently paired with your hardware wallet.

TREZOR

To find your TREZOR HD public key, login to myTREZOR.com and click on your device name on the left side. In this case “TREZOR Device”. Click “Show XPUBs”:

The QR code displayed here is your HD public key and will be scanned later.

Ledger Hardware Wallets

If you use any of Ledger’s hardware wallets, you can find your HD public key in Ledger’s Chrome application. From the accounts screen, click “Settings” in the top nav bar:



Then click the green “EXPORT” button:



The QR code displayed here is your HD public key and will be scanned into your mobile wallet.



Importing the HD Seed

Now that you have your hardware wallet’s HD public key, it’s time to add it to your mobile wallet. Unfortunately, no iPhone mobile wallets support HD watch-only wallets, so click here for an alternative for iPhone users. Mycelium and Sentinel are two wallets in the Google Play Store that support watch-only wallets.

Adding HD Watch-only to Mycelium

Open Mycelium and navigate to the “ACCOUNTS” tab. Click the key on the top right corner:



Select “Advanced” at the bottom:



Now select “Scan” and scan in the QR code of your HD seed:



That’s it! You’ll now see a new account under the “ACCOUNTS” tab, which can be used to receive payments directly to your hardware wallet.

Navigate to the “BALANCE” tab and the address/QR code displayed is the next unused address from your hardware wallet. Just scan this at a Bitcoin ATM and your bitcoins will be sent directly to your wallet.

Adding HD Watch-only to Sentinel

Download the Sentinel app from the Google Play store if you haven’t done so already.

Open the app and tap “Start”:



Then select “SCAN” and scan the QR code of your hardware wallet’s HD seed:



Add a label for your wallet:



Tap the blue plus sign in the bottom right corner:



Tap the green QR code next to “Deposit”:



The QR code here is an address from your hardware wallet. Just scan this to send bitcoins directly from an ATM to your hardware wallet.





Using a Block Explorer

You’ll have to use a Bitcoin block explorer to send to your hardware wallet if you don’t have an Android phone.

First, open the software wallet you currently use with your hardware wallet. Get an address from your wallet and copy and paste it into a Bitcoin block explorer like Blockchain.info.

If you’ve successfully completed the search for this address, you should see a QR code at the top of the page:



Bookmark this page and access it on your mobile device. Now you can scan this QR code from your phone at a Bitcoin ATM and send directly to your hardware wallet.