MOUNTAIN VIEW (CBS SF) – The arrival of Silicon Valley’s first Bitcoin ATM in Mountain View may not herald the dawn of a virtual currency for the masses.

The machine to be unveiled Thursday at an e-commerce convention known as the Bitcoinference returns Bitcoin numbers on deposits of ordinary, government-backed currency.

“If you have the local scrip, like US dollars, and you want to convert it to Bitcoin,” explained Georgetown University associate finance professor James Angel, the ATM will “take your money and spit out a Bitcoin number for you.”