A Vancouver-based company has bought 5 Bitcoin ATMs and plans to have them up and running around Canada by December.

Bitcoiniacs, which operates a concrete Bitcoin exchange in Vancouver, purchased the RoboCoin machines for $18,500 each and has the first already running in Vancouver, at Waves coffee shop on Howe Street.

Four more are scheduled for Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Calgary.

Bitcoiniacs founder Michell Demeter is a serial entrepreneur who has run sign shops and a moving company. He first began toying with Bitcoin exchanges on LocalBitcoins.com.

Dememter is eyeing a commission of well-nigh iii% from the machines after his company splits its share with RoboCoin. His account at Virtex, a Bitcoin commutation in Calgary, supports the ATM service. Trades volition laissez passer along RoboCoin'southward servers.

The Washington Mail service reports that the Vancouver machine has already seen 100,000 CAD in ATM transactions.

RoboCoin introduced its ATM kiosks — which are about the size of an arcade game — at Bitcoin 2022 in San Jose.

A transaction on one of the machines requires a 4-stride process for security and compliance reasons. The machines photograph the user, scans their palm, scans their ID and asks them to sign upward with an e-mail address.

RoboCoin began taking preorders in August. At that place have been more than 160 inquiries from every corner of the globe: From Argentina to Sweden to Zimbabwe to Australia.

The $18,500 price per machine that Bitcoiniacs paid has since risen to $twenty,000. RoboCoin, of course, likewise accepts payment in Bitcoins.

RoboCoin CEO Jordan Kelly says cities outside of Canada — including Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Berlin — can expect to see their machines in early on 2022.

RoboCoin advertises its ATMs as being a net positive for the entire Bitcoin market because each machine increases liquidity and usages of the digital currency. This, it argues, drives up the currency'due south valuation and legitimacy.

Transactions on Bitcoiniacs' machines are express to $3,000 because of record keeping requirements. Upwards to that point, though, Demeter does not expect regulatory problems, as Canada's financial regulator, FINTRAC, does not have its optics on Bitcoin for the moment.

Kelly estimates that eighty percent of the transactions over RoboCoin ATMs are people buying Bitcoins, with just xx percent representing people selling their Bitcoins for hard currency.