 I'm Adrienne Jeffers with The Verge and I'm here at CES with Zach Harvey who is the CEO of Lamassu Incorporated. We're here with what's being called the Bitcoin ATM but it's not exactly an ATM. What is it? It's more of a Bitcoin vending machine in a lot of ways but it really depends what you consider an ATM. I mean if it's a Bitcoin ATM then maybe it's a completely different creature than an ATM, a standard ATM because what you want to get out of this machine is Bitcoin. That's the point of it. So when you go to a standard ATM you go and you put in your debit card or bank card and you want to get the cash. And in our machine you want to get rid of the cash and you want to get Bitcoin. So this machine, I can put US dollars in here and it will give me Bitcoin. Right. Wow. Exactly. Okay. So this is crazy because one of the problems with Bitcoin is how hard it is to actually get your hands on some Bitcoin. Would you say this is one of the easiest ways to actually buy Bitcoin? Right. Well we designed it to be the easiest way to get Bitcoin. So we put a lot of thought on how to make it as accessible as possible, how to make it as simple as possible and we developed this machine from the ground up to make it super simple. So it really is three steps. You just scan in your QR code so the machine knows where to send the Bitcoin, you put in your cash and you press send and then they appear on your phone. Got it. And then three months later you're a millionaire. Well yeah, exactly. That's what's been going on so far. What is the price of Bitcoin right now? Well right now the price of Bitcoin is about $9.50. Okay and we're looking at this on the machine here. So right, so when it says our current Bitcoin price is, this would be the price of whatever the operator is charging. So the price could be $9.50 and he could be taking a small percentage on top of that for the convenience fee. I see. And the operator is the corner store bodega or wherever it is that has installed the Bitcoin machine just like an ATM. Right, exactly. The one who bought the machine and installed it and then he gets the cash and then he sends his Bitcoins or connects to an exchange to do it for him. And you guys have actually sold these. They're placed, how many have you sold? Well we've sold over 130 so far and they're just starting to go live. So we have one in Helsinki, Finland in a record store in the largest train station. We have them in Bratislava, Slovakia, Melbourne, Australia and then we're going to have a bunch of them in Canada, US, Australia. All of Europe, Japan, China, Kyrgyzstan. Any in Vegas? Not yet, hopefully. Maybe a Bitcoin slot machine would be better for Vegas? Maybe this time next year, yeah they'll be all around here. The strip will be filled with Bitcoin machines. So pretty soon people will be able to actually go to those machines in those locations and use them. Right, well they already are wherever they're live, people can just go there at any point. So some of them are live already. Right, the ones in Finland and Slovakia and Australia are live and in the coming weeks a lot more will start going live. I think they'll really start popping up like mushrooms all over. And by spring when all of the 130 plus machines get out there, that's when it'll really be exciting for us. We'll know that in lots of major cities and some less major cities, people will just be able to go and get Bitcoin immediately anywhere. At the mall? Exactly. We have had some malls contact us. So that would be interesting in different countries. Teens buying Bitcoin? Well, they can. I mean they can take their allowance money and put in five bucks and use it to buy things online. I think that's a great use of your allowance, teens. So let's talk about the hardware a little bit. How much does this thing weigh? Well this thing weighs about 110 pounds, 45 kilos. They're made in Portugal so that's how we measure them. It's a lot heavier than our prototype because our prototype didn't have the interior vault. And once we installed the interior vault, it made everything a lot heavier because that's 6 millimeter armored Swedish steel that we chose for the protection of the cache itself. So that made the machine a lot heavier. We also made the steel itself thicker on the machine. So that's a lot of stuff that after we first presented the machine in San Jose, we kind of went back to the drawing board a bit and said, okay, this is going to be installed everywhere. We have to make sure that these machines are extremely robust, that they're over-engineered for smash and grab proof and even basically as secure as an ATM, a standard ATM would be. And I think we feel pretty comfortable with that right now. And San Jose, that was the Bitcoin conference in, was that March? It was May. May, okay. Things happen really fast in the Bitcoin world. Okay. So this thing has been out for a while but it's just now going live. Right. So that was our prototype. So it wasn't actually out there yet. We only started accepting pre-orders in August and that's when we had finished this design. So when we felt good about this design and we knew that we could manufacture it in a timely manner, that's when we started accepting pre-orders and that was in August. And we've already shipped out, I would say about 15 and another almost 30 are going out next week. Cool. And so the other thing that strikes me about this is that it is, it looks nice. Like a lot of Bitcoin services and products put design secondary. That's just the nature of the community. People are a lot more engineering and not as designing and this is like very sleek looking and the interface is nice and you guys are actually still working on the software. You said you just pushed an update for it. Right. Well, right. We're always improving the software. This is still an early stage of the software and there are always things to improve and added functionality and new ideas that we have that we really want to implement. So we're always changing that and it's something that's really easy with this machine to just either push updates or have people download them. And so as Bitcoin gains more adoption, I mean the price has been going crazy. It's been all over the mainstream news. It's been on CNN, CNBC. You've probably done some interviews. I know you've done Bloomberg News. You've probably done interviews with a lot of the main networks. It seems like usability is an important thing to get right if it's ever going to really be something that most people use or understand. Right. And I think there are some services that are doing a really great job of that like BitPay that we use that make it really easy for merchants to use Bitcoin and makes it really easy for us to sign up our merch, the suppliers that we work for Bitcoin. We pay 90% of our suppliers with Bitcoin. Really? And we do that because using BitPay. We just sign them up all to BitPay. They're like, I don't know what Bitcoin is. It's like, here's BitPay. And what's BitPay exactly? BitPay is a service that makes it incredibly easy for a merchant to accept Bitcoin without having to deal with it if he doesn't want to. And then if he wants to only deal with 10% of it, like get 10% in Bitcoin and 90% directly in cash to his bank account, he can do that as well. So even people that are a little concerned about Bitcoin or holding it or don't know where to store it, if we tell them, listen, we'd really prefer to pay with Bitcoin, but it will go directly to your bank account. And it's hard for them to say no to that when they pay less than wires or credit cards. We even signed up the manufacturer of our bill validators, which are a huge publicly traded company in Japan. And we signed them up to BitPay. And that makes life a lot easier for us because we can just pay everyone in Bitcoin. And we accept payment for our machine using BitPay for Bitcoin. Great. So in order to do a demonstration, we convinced our director, editor, John Lagomarsino, to invest $2 in this exciting new virtual currency. Maybe we should say what Bitcoin is. What's your favorite way of explaining Bitcoin? I have my own way, which I repeat in every single one of my articles. But how do you explain it? Well, I think the easiest way to explain it for people in two words is internet money. Because people kind of understand that when they had letters back in the day and you had to write them on paper and put them in an envelope and send them out, and now you have emails and it's just internet kind of letters, that it's immediate. And the same thing with Bitcoin. It's you kind of get rid of all the middlemen and everything around. And it just makes it really simple to send money anywhere from one person to another. There you go. All right. So John is going to invest $2 in Bitcoin. And so can you walk us through? We also have his phone here. Can you walk us through the Bitcoin ATM machine? Yes. All right. Thank you. So the first thing is we press start and we scan in the Bitcoin address to the machine. And now we have his address here, which now everyone can send him money. Great. We're doing $2. One. As soon as we're ready. So how many Bitcoins is that? So this is 2.07 milli Bitcoin. That's how much you're going to get for your $2 at the current rate of $954.76. Right. But that's going to double by the end of next week. Of course. Right. We'll have $4. Great. And when we're ready, if you'd like, you can send the Bitcoins. Okay. I'm sending you Bitcoins, John. All right. It says your Bitcoins are on their way. And how long does this usually take? It's done. It's done. All right. And if you want to verify it, you can go back to the phone. Do you see a little green thing that says? Yep, it says receiving 2.06999 milli BTC. That's it. They're on their way. All right. Let me show that. Great. All right. Well, that was the Bitcoin machine. Also commonly called the Bitcoin ATM machine. Thank you so much for stopping by. All right. With you ever show has as I
 I'm Adrienne Jeffers with The Verge and I'm here at CES with Zach Harvey who is the CEO
 of Lamassu Incorporated.
 We're here with what's being called the Bitcoin ATM but it's not exactly an ATM.
 What is it?
 It's more of a Bitcoin vending machine in a lot of ways but it really depends what you
 consider an ATM.
 I mean if it's a Bitcoin ATM then maybe it's a completely different creature than an ATM,
 a standard ATM because what you want to get out of this machine is Bitcoin.
 That's the point of it.
 So when you go to a standard ATM you go and you put in your debit card or bank card and
 you want to get the cash.
 And in our machine you want to get rid of the cash and you want to get Bitcoin.
 So this machine, I can put US dollars in here and it will give me Bitcoin.
 Right.
 Wow.
 Exactly.
 Okay.
 So this is crazy because one of the problems with Bitcoin is how hard it is to actually
 get your hands on some Bitcoin.
 Would you say this is one of the easiest ways to actually buy Bitcoin?
 Right.
 Well we designed it to be the easiest way to get Bitcoin.
 So we put a lot of thought on how to make it as accessible as possible, how to make
 it as simple as possible and we developed this machine from the ground up to make it
 super simple.
 So it really is three steps.
 You just scan in your QR code so the machine knows where to send the Bitcoin, you put in
 your cash and you press send and then they appear on your phone.
 Got it.
 And then three months later you're a millionaire.
 Well yeah, exactly.
 That's what's been going on so far.
 What is the price of Bitcoin right now?
 Well right now the price of Bitcoin is about $9.50.
 Okay and we're looking at this on the machine here.
 So right, so when it says our current Bitcoin price is, this would be the price of whatever
 the operator is charging.
 So the price could be $9.50 and he could be taking a small percentage on top of that for
 the convenience fee.
 I see.
 And the operator is the corner store bodega or wherever it is that has installed the Bitcoin
 machine just like an ATM.
 Right, exactly.
 The one who bought the machine and installed it and then he gets the cash and then he sends
 his Bitcoins or connects to an exchange to do it for him.
 And you guys have actually sold these.
 They're placed, how many have you sold?
 Well we've sold over 130 so far and they're just starting to go live.
 So we have one in Helsinki, Finland in a record store in the largest train station.
 We have them in Bratislava, Slovakia, Melbourne, Australia and then we're going to have a bunch
 of them in Canada, US, Australia.
 All of Europe, Japan, China, Kyrgyzstan.
 Any in Vegas?
 Not yet, hopefully.
 Maybe a Bitcoin slot machine would be better for Vegas?
 Maybe this time next year, yeah they'll be all around here.
 The strip will be filled with Bitcoin machines.
 So pretty soon people will be able to actually go to those machines in those locations and
 use them.
 Right, well they already are wherever they're live, people can just go there at any point.
 So some of them are live already.
 Right, the ones in Finland and Slovakia and Australia are live and in the coming weeks
 a lot more will start going live.
 I think they'll really start popping up like mushrooms all over.
 And by spring when all of the 130 plus machines get out there, that's when it'll really be
 exciting for us.
 We'll know that in lots of major cities and some less major cities, people will just be
 able to go and get Bitcoin immediately anywhere.
 At the mall?
 Exactly.
 We have had some malls contact us.
 So that would be interesting in different countries.
 Teens buying Bitcoin?
 Well, they can.
 I mean they can take their allowance money and put in five bucks and use it to buy things
 online.
 I think that's a great use of your allowance, teens.
 So let's talk about the hardware a little bit.
 How much does this thing weigh?
 Well this thing weighs about 110 pounds, 45 kilos.
 They're made in Portugal so that's how we measure them.
 It's a lot heavier than our prototype because our prototype didn't have the interior vault.
 And once we installed the interior vault, it made everything a lot heavier because that's
 6 millimeter armored Swedish steel that we chose for the protection of the cache itself.
 So that made the machine a lot heavier.
 We also made the steel itself thicker on the machine.
 So that's a lot of stuff that after we first presented the machine in San Jose, we kind
 of went back to the drawing board a bit and said, okay, this is going to be installed
 everywhere.
 We have to make sure that these machines are extremely robust, that they're over-engineered
 for smash and grab proof and even basically as secure as an ATM, a standard ATM would
 be.
 And I think we feel pretty comfortable with that right now.
 And San Jose, that was the Bitcoin conference in, was that March?
 It was May.
 May, okay.
 Things happen really fast in the Bitcoin world.
 Okay.
 So this thing has been out for a while but it's just now going live.
 Right.
 So that was our prototype.
 So it wasn't actually out there yet.
 We only started accepting pre-orders in August and that's when we had finished this design.
 So when we felt good about this design and we knew that we could manufacture it in a
 timely manner, that's when we started accepting pre-orders and that was in August.
 And we've already shipped out, I would say about 15 and another almost 30 are going out
 next week.
 Cool.
 And so the other thing that strikes me about this is that it is, it looks nice.
 Like a lot of Bitcoin services and products put design secondary.
 That's just the nature of the community.
 People are a lot more engineering and not as designing and this is like very sleek looking
 and the interface is nice and you guys are actually still working on the software.
 You said you just pushed an update for it.
 Right.
 Well, right.
 We're always improving the software.
 This is still an early stage of the software and there are always things to improve and
 added functionality and new ideas that we have that we really want to implement.
 So we're always changing that and it's something that's really easy with this machine to just
 either push updates or have people download them.
 And so as Bitcoin gains more adoption, I mean the price has been going crazy.
 It's been all over the mainstream news.
 It's been on CNN, CNBC.
 You've probably done some interviews.
 I know you've done Bloomberg News.
 You've probably done interviews with a lot of the main networks.
 It seems like usability is an important thing to get right if it's ever going to really
 be something that most people use or understand.
 Right.
 And I think there are some services that are doing a really great job of that like BitPay
 that we use that make it really easy for merchants to use Bitcoin and makes it really easy for
 us to sign up our merch, the suppliers that we work for Bitcoin.
 We pay 90% of our suppliers with Bitcoin.
 Really?
 And we do that because using BitPay.
 We just sign them up all to BitPay.
 They're like, I don't know what Bitcoin is.
 It's like, here's BitPay.
 And what's BitPay exactly?
 BitPay is a service that makes it incredibly easy for a merchant to accept Bitcoin without
 having to deal with it if he doesn't want to.
 And then if he wants to only deal with 10% of it, like get 10% in Bitcoin and 90% directly
 in cash to his bank account, he can do that as well.
 So even people that are a little concerned about Bitcoin or holding it or don't know
 where to store it, if we tell them, listen, we'd really prefer to pay with Bitcoin, but
 it will go directly to your bank account.
 And it's hard for them to say no to that when they pay less than wires or credit cards.
 We even signed up the manufacturer of our bill validators, which are a huge publicly
 traded company in Japan.
 And we signed them up to BitPay.
 And that makes life a lot easier for us because we can just pay everyone in Bitcoin.
 And we accept payment for our machine using BitPay for Bitcoin.
 Great.
 So in order to do a demonstration, we convinced our director, editor, John Lagomarsino, to
 invest $2 in this exciting new virtual currency.
 Maybe we should say what Bitcoin is.
 What's your favorite way of explaining Bitcoin?
 I have my own way, which I repeat in every single one of my articles.
 But how do you explain it?
 Well, I think the easiest way to explain it for people in two words is internet money.
 Because people kind of understand that when they had letters back in the day and you had
 to write them on paper and put them in an envelope and send them out, and now you have
 emails and it's just internet kind of letters, that it's immediate.
 And the same thing with Bitcoin.
 It's you kind of get rid of all the middlemen and everything around.
 And it just makes it really simple to send money anywhere from one person to another.
 There you go.
 All right.
 So John is going to invest $2 in Bitcoin.
 And so can you walk us through?
 We also have his phone here.
 Can you walk us through the Bitcoin ATM machine?
 Yes.
 All right.
 Thank you.
 So the first thing is we press start and we scan in the Bitcoin address to the machine.
 And now we have his address here, which now everyone can send him money.
 Great.
 We're doing $2.
 One.
 As soon as we're ready.
 So how many Bitcoins is that?
 So this is 2.07 milli Bitcoin.
 That's how much you're going to get for your $2 at the current rate of $954.76.
 Right.
 But that's going to double by the end of next week.
 Of course.
 Right.
 We'll have $4.
 Great.
 And when we're ready, if you'd like, you can send the Bitcoins.
 Okay.
 I'm sending you Bitcoins, John.
 All right.
 It says your Bitcoins are on their way.
 And how long does this usually take?
 It's done.
 It's done.
 All right.
 And if you want to verify it, you can go back to the phone.
 Do you see a little green thing that says?
 Yep, it says receiving 2.06999 milli BTC.
 That's it.
 They're on their way.
 All right.
 Let me show that.
 Great.
 All right.
 Well, that was the Bitcoin machine.
 Also commonly called the Bitcoin ATM machine.
 Thank you so much for stopping by.
 All right.
 With you ever show has as I