It’s bitcoin with coffee to go!
Buying cryptocurrency will be as easy as fueling up and grabbing snacks after a new deal to install bitcoin ATMs in a nationwide convenience store and gas station chain.
New Yorkers will soon be able to fill up the gas tank and buy cryptocurrency after gas station chain Circle K announced a deal to install bitcoin ATMs.
“Our goal is to provide as much access as we possibly can for consumers, by putting more ATM machines in all 50 U.S states, including throughout New York,” Brandon Mintz, CEO of Atlanta-based Bitcoin Depot, told The Post.
Users can feed traditional cash into a bitcoin ATM to quickly and easily buy the cryptocurrency, using their cell phones to create a “digital wallet” to house the funds they’re purchasing at the automated tellers.
The machines can also cheaply send money abroad, an option which may prove quite attractive for New York’s “unbanked.”
The “unbanked” account for about 10 percent of New York households, according to the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and typically include poorer, immigrant residents who don’t rely on traditional financial institutions to hold their cash.
The cryptocurrency is considered legal tender in El Salvador and support for legitimizing it is gaining traction in Latin America, according to a report.
“Our kiosks [also] enable those people to store their capital digitally, instead of piling up cash under the pillow,” said Derek Muhney of rival Coinsource, a bitcoin ATM provider in New York who said the region’s “substantial buying power” could make the Big Apple a cryptocurrency jackpot.
Circle K has 6,336 stores nationwide, including several in New Jersey and one on Long Island. Bitcoin Depot is awaiting regulatory approval to operate in New York.
Today, there’s at least 20,000 bitcoin ATMs nationwide, with several hundred in the New York area placed in corner bodegas, delis, laundromats and other locations.
