Bitcoin ATM - Is It Real Deal? What To Watch Out For?

In this post I will share my experience of selling BTC in a Bitcoin ATM and what I learned from it. I hope this post will help you in many ways !!!

So, few months ago I was trying to cash out some of my bitcoins locally in Canada, specially in a BTM (Bitcoin ATM).

After an extensive search I found few options where I can buy and sell my BTC. To give it a try, I went with the nearest one. I was excited and nervous at same time. Excited, as I was using it for first time and nervous as it was unknown. It was like who knows if this even works 100% or not, who will refund my BTC if something goes South.

Anyways, I went to that place and it was a Convenience Store. Yes, BTM was located inside a Convenience Store!!

I did my transaction and sold $100 worth of BTC and paid a whooping 15% in fees. I know it is too much fee, but hey it worth first time experience :-). Selling BTC was straight forward process and I will break it down for you.

1 Choose Sell BTC/ Withdraw Cash option on BTM Screen.
2 Choose Coin you want to sell. Normal options are BTC/LTC/ETH.
3 It will ask you amount of money you want to Withdraw from BTM. Select your amount.
4 Next screen will show you a BTC Address and amount of BTC you have to send. In most of the cases you see a QR code and that makes life MUCH Easier !!!
5 Scan QR code and send BTC to that address. In my case I send around $115 to withdraw $100. Pro tip: You can choose priority payment method from your BTC wallet (eg. Blockchain) to send BTC faster. This will save you from lot of waiting.
6 BTM will print out a receipt with redemption code. Keep your receipt safe as you will use this code to withdraw cash.
7 Wait for sometime (1 network confirmation) and your cash would be ready to withdraw using redemption code.
8 That's it, you are good to go. Yeah it was that easy.. No personal Info required !!!

Now, there are few points that may differ for you depending on BTM you are using. Like, some BTM prints receipt first for you to scan QR code, some of them also provide option of entering your phone number for easy notification when your cash is ready and some of them make it compulsory for you to enter your phone number.

So, paper is MUST for most of the BTM and if you are going to one, call ahead and make sure that BTM has paper, else you may just waste your time and effort.

This was my first experience with BTM, after this I went to few more and learned many things that I will share in next post.

I hope you liked this post and this may have cleared few doubts out using BTM. Please comment and let know what other things you would like to know about BTM and please upvote if you liked this post.

I have also recorded a video and posted in one of my Youtube Channel. This video is in my native language Hindi, I hope you will like it.

Thanks for reading, catch you soon.

Ciao,
Sandeep B