For his summer exhibition at Bauhaus University, German art student Max F. Albrecht turned an old vending machine into a Bitcoin vending machine. You feed Euro coins into the machine and it prints out a box with an easywallet.org link in it. Navigate to that link and you’ll see your bitcoin, which you can then send to whoever you want. Mr. Albrecht helpfully offers the case of Wikileaks as a worthy Bitcoin recipient.

On a Bitcoin forum, Mr. Albrecht writes:

My dream project would be a electronic version 2.0 with the ability to also withdrawal cash for BTC. My initial research shows this would be possible using a mixture of open source software and hardware and some proprietary modules to deal with the physical money.

The Bitcoin vending machine is an interesting concept as it mashes up old school hardware–an antique vending machine–with high tech currency. Mr. Albrecht says the project is still in development, and its next phase will support TORwallet.net.