Last week, a Skyhook ATM in SoHo was offering Bitcoins to customers at a rate of $430.54. The machine, at the Bitcoin Center on Cleveland Place, is powered by a Nexus 7 tablet and allows users to insert stacks of cash to convert to digital currency. Next to it sits a Genesis ATM that lets users do the opposite: Turn their Bitcoins into stacks of $20 bills. Even with the upfront costs (the Genesis machine sells for $14,000), these machines are bringing their owners serious coin.
New York has 43 publicly accessible Bitcoin ATMs, the most of any city in the world, according to the website Coin ATM Radar. The currency is notoriously volatile, but for owners of Bitcoin dispensers, the machines bring a steady source of revenue. Zach Harvey, CEO of Lamassu, which has a machine at Le Village French Petite Bistro in the East Village, told currency news site CoinDesk the average owner sees about $20,000 in cash deposited monthly, netting about $1,100 in commissions.
Bitcoin ATMs are found as far as Corona, Queens, and Brownsville, Brooklyn. Chris Yim, co-founder of Bitcoin broker LibertyX, which sold its four Bitcoin machines last year to focus on retailer partnerships, told Crain’s a rapidly increasing number of New Yorkers are using the technology for “rebittances,” or Bitcoin remittances, as a cheaper alternative to traditional money-sending services such as Western Union
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