Quote from: deepceleron on October 22, 2014, 04:46:39 AM

Quote from: marhjan on October 21, 2014, 07:10:48 PM

I had this idea today - and should probably try to develop it myself but that won't really happen. So - anyway I'm just going to leave this here and see if anyone will run with it.

You know those CoinStar machines in supermarkets etc? (in USA afaik) They convert small change into USD for a fee of about 9% - most of them now also have the option to buy various gift cards for the full value of your change (Amazon, ITunes, various restaurants etc...)

In a Bitcoin ATM thread two years ago:

Quote from: deepceleron on November 17, 2012, 05:52:46 PM

How about a business like CoinStar machines giving out BitCoins. They already have a business model charging dummies 9.8% for exchanging USD->USD. You'd only need a better way of giving machines your address than typing in 34 digits, a "print qr code for this address" in Bitcoin is a first step. Make a good usage model where interacting with the machines isn't hard (starting with a universal "pay to me" card that can give differing machines your bitcoin address) and they might consider it.

"An estimated 84 percent of coinstar users are women". Not going to comment on this one.

They recently sold off their money transfer business to Sigue, a company that profits from what Bitcoin does for free (http://www.sigue.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=122&Itemid=114), so they don't have a conflict of interest in now promoting an instant and free money transfer method.

Coinstar does not charge people 9% for changing USD -> USD, but they rather automate the process of converting large amounts of coins into a "format" that is spendable, as most banks will not accept large amounts of change/coin that is not "wrapped" by denomination.

The fact that a coinstar machine is expensive to produce as this kind of technology is not cheap (to count and sort coins deposited in mass) and needs to be audit-able will make it less likely that there will be a machine that converts change into bitcoin. Any operator would need to cover the costs of the machine plus some margin in converting their fiat into bitcoin