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Best Bitcoin ATM

Bitcoin ATMs in the wild

I have had it in my head to write something comparing Bitcoin ATMs. I do not have a lot of experience with them but I was intrigued with the idea of putting in greenbacks to get digital gold zapped into my hardware wallet. There was one right by my house. I could just walk into the Circle K and check it out.

Finally, I did do that. I went there and I went through the process of giving them a cell phone number at the ATM as well as an email address. I bought some Bitcoin but I noticed the price seemed a bit high. In fact when I got home I had paid a 20% premium to buy Bitcoin from the machine. This did not seem like a great idea unless one needed to launder money.

Still I was hooked so when I wandered in I would stick a few sawbucks in and buy some Bitcoin OR some Litecoin. It turned out the ATM at the Circle K was only charging about 12%–15% premium on Litecoin, so I started buying pieces of those instead. I even bought a little Ether here too but the price did too seem favorable.

Next I heard an ATM company was going to carry Dogecoin as an option. As a Dogecoin fan and hodl’er, I wanted to try them out. I think Dogecoin could be the underdog cryptocurrency of 2021…pun intended. Hell, my dog recommended it, so doggie coin it is. I found my way to a nearby liquor store carrying the line of Bitcoin ATMs I sought.

I popped in and bought dogecoin. I was happy immediately with the exchange rate. I noticed the other coins being sold were not as heavily loaded as they were at the Circle K. The Litecoin premium was 10%, even a little. The dogecoin premium was 8% and the Bitcoin premium was about 12%. I stayed at this ATM for a time until it told me no more purchases with so little identity provided.

I started going over to the this liquor store to accumulate Dogecoin. I also monitored the premium being charged to see if they fluctuated a lot. The premiums remained about the same as the first day i had tried their ATM. I was very pleased with this ATM.

I started thinking I should write something about this experience since which ATM to use is a question. There are different exchange rates between different companies. There are also different exchange rates for different coins. I noticed Litecoin is fairly consistently one of the lowest premiums across Bitcoin ATMs.

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