The most frequent asked questions regarding cryptocurrencies, how our ATM’s works, regulations and more.
What is Crypto?
Crypto is short for cryptocurrency. A cryptocurrency is a digital asset or currency that is exchanged online using a digital ledger called the blockchain.
Our ATM’s offers Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash and other cryptos for purchase. Those are all cryptocurrencies.
What is the Blockchain?
The Blockchain is a public ledger that Bitcoin essentially travels on. All transactions that are verified are added to the Blockchain, allowing anyone to look up information on a specific wallet address or transaction.
When the Blockchain network load increases your transaction could take longer than usual to confirm.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a decentralised form of digital currency that is created and held electronically. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like dollars or Euros. They’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world using software that solves mathematical problems. More information www.bitcoin.org
What is a satoshi?
Satoshi is the name given to the smallest Bitcoin unit. This is the equivalent of how cents work for dollars or euros. The main difference is that the satoshi to bitcoin ratio is 100 million. That means that there are 100 million satoshis (also known as sats) per bitcoin.
What’s a Bitcoin address?
A Bitcoin address is a digital string of numbers and letters that you need in order to send and receive Bitcoin. They usually contain 26 characters. All addresses are different and some wallets allow you to create a QR code that can be scanned in the machine so you don’t need to type that information.
What is a Bitcoin Wallet?
A Bitcoin Wallet is a free and simple app you download onto your phone which can be used to make fast and very cheap, peer-to-peer payments using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash and more. More information about wallets here.
What can I use my cryptocurrency for?
Digital currency is very easy to use and has many uses.
After you receive it into your wallet you can send it instantly to friends and family all around the world.
You can currently spend your crypto currency online at stores as payment like Bitrefill. Some people purchase virtual currency as an investment, and some cryptocurrencies are designed for specific uses on dedicated platforms.
What determines the “price” of cryptocurrencies?
Just like all things, Bitcoin is worth what people are willing to pay for it. This is seen to go up and down very rapidly, similar to a stock, prices for crypto are determined by supply and demand.
In this case, demand is made up of three components:
Holding crypto to pay for goods and services,
Holding crypto a store of value in a medium-term
Speculative demand.
So, What is the difference between Bitcoin and Monopoly money?
The creator of bitcoin set the currency up so that only 21 million bitcoins will ever be released. This means that bitcoins are finite so to speak.
Currently, 6.25 bitcoins are released every 10 minutes. That rate is designed to decrease over time. The last bitcoin is anticipated to be released in the year 2140.
What benefits does Crypto have?
Transactions are faster, it’s anonymous, you are the sole owner of your cryptocurrency and international transactions are possible without extra fees. Another benefit, Bitcoin fights again inflation because no government or company can print more of it.
Who regulates cryptocurrencies?
No single person nor institution regulates them. The only control is the “public eye” of the Internet combined with the belief that the underlying algorithms assure the integrity (no falsification, no double-spending, safety of storage) of the currency. The occurrence of a “better” (or at least alternative) form of money can be looked at as a thorn in the eye of its current monopoly suppliers, I.e. governments and central banks.
Bitcoin regulation in Ecuador.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not recognised as legal tender in Ecuador, but it’s not forbidden to buy and sell them. More information about the crypto regulation in Ecuador:
Bitcoin ATMs are physical machines located in businesses and shopping malls that allow you to buy or sell Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with cash.
A Bitcoin ATM looks and operates like a traditional fiat ATM. However, there are some critical differences between the two machines.
The first one is the method of funds disbursement. With a traditional ATM, you simply need to have a debit or credit card and put it into the machine to get your money. Once the ATM disburses your cash, your transaction is completed. It’s a lot different from Bitcoin ATMs. Rather than accessing your account and executing trades with a Debit or Credit card, the Bitcoin ATM works by depositing cash and providing a wallet address for receiving the purchased digital assets.
How to buy cryptocurrencies at our Bitcoin ATMs?
Choose the crypto that you want to buy from the list of available options.
Scan the QR code of your Crypto wallet address with the scanner on the machine.
Insert the cash into the BATM, one banknote at a time. Once finished press “Buy”.
Check your crypto wallet to confirm the transaction. At the end you can request an invoice to be sent to your email address.
How to sell cryptocurrencies at our Bitcoin ATMs?
IMPORTANT: Not all our BATMs support sell transactions. Please verify at our locations here.
The sale process consists of 4 steps:
Select the cryptocurrency you want to sell, at the time of writing this guide, the currencies available for sale are Bitcoin and Litecoin.
Select the amount to receive in dollars.
The BATM will deliver a receipt with the QR code where you have to send the exact amount of cryptocurrencies in the established time. IMPORTANT: You must keep the receipt, it is the only way to withdraw your cash. Once the cryptocurrencies have been sent, you must wait until the reception has been confirmed, this depends on the blockchain of each cryptocurrency, in the case of Bitcoin between 10 to 20 minutes for a confirmation. In the case of Litecoin between 5 and 10 minutes.
Once the transaction has been confirmed, at the BATM select the cryptocurrency you sent and then “Redeem ticket”. Then scan the QR code of the receipt and that’s it, once the machine confirms the receipt it will deliver your cash.
For more information please take a look to our video tutorial.
What is the minimum purchase amount at our Bitcoin ATM’s?
The minimum amount to purchase or sell cryptos at our Bitcoin ATM’s depends on the coin that you want to buy/sell and fees of the network, but usually it starts at $20. At the moment when you insert your cash into the Bitcoin ATM, if you are inserting less than the minimum amount you’ll receive an alert in order to insert a higher banknote.
Can you use credit or debit card at our Bitcoin ATM’s?
No, our ATMs currently only accept cash.
Why isn’t the banknote acceptor accepting your cash?
There are several reasons the banknote acceptor might reject your cash. First, when Bitcoin mining fees get really high, it can make it prohibitively expensive for the ATM to execute some smaller transactions. If the ATM minimum transaction is set to $20, so the first bill in the banknote validator must be $20 or larger. The machine only accepts one banknote at a time. It is possible that you may have somehow acquired a counterfeit bill; the banknote acceptor will immediately reject these. Lastly, the ATM only accept U.S. Dollar-denominated currency.
Why haven’t you received your Bitcoin yet?
When you purchase bitcoin from one of our bitcoin ATMs, the bitcoin has to be sent to you on the Bitcoin network called the blockchain. Depending on the wallet you are using the wallet may require 3-6 confirmations before the bitcoin is actually deposited in your wallet and spendable. Each confirmation typically takes 10 minutes in average. This means it can take up to an hour or more for your bitcoin to be deposited in your wallet after purchasing bitcoin from one of our ATMs.
You can check the the status of your transaction in any Bitcoin Blockchain explorer like Blockchair.com and enter on the search bar your Bitcoin wallet address or other crypto wallet address that you’ve used, then click on search.
blockchain explorer where you can see all your transactions status
You’ll get all the information available about your wallet transactions.
What is the Bitcoin Lightning Network?
The Lightning Network is a second layer technology applied to Bitcoin that uses micropayment channels to scale its blockchain’s capability to conduct transactions more efficiently and faster, without the necessity to wait for 3-6 confirmations, receiving payments at the speed of light ⚡️.
How Can You Protect From Fraud?
Protecting yourself from fraud when using our ATM’s is simple. Only use QR code that you generated from your own personal wallet. Never use a QR code that someone else has given you, it’s most likely a scam.
Never send bitcoin or any cryptocurrency to someone you don’t know, or haven’t met in real life. We do not recommend using any of our services to send money to your boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, husband, or wife that you met online, and we are not liable for monetary losses if you proceed to use our services for any of these purposes.
Before using our ATM’s, take a look if there are no stickers attached to the QR scanner on the machine. In the case there’s something sticked to the QR scanner, please let us know in our Contact section.
IMPORTANT: Our ATMs are NOT part of any company, Whatsapp, Facebook or Telegram group that offers daily, weekly, monthly earnings, etc., for the simple fact of buying cryptocurrencies and depositing them in the wallets of said companies. They could be a ponzi scheme, where you can lose all your money.
How can You get help if a transaction fails at our ATM’s?
If a transaction fails, you’ll get an error message on the screen with a transaction identification (ID); please take a picture of that ID and send to us in our Contact Form. As soon as we receive the ID, we can check what happened and be in contact with you in order to solve the problem.
Where can You learn more about Bitcoin, Blockchain and other cryptocurrencies?
If you want to learn more, we recommend the next resources:
