Coinme Enters Its 49th State, Installing Bitcoin ATMs in Vermont Grocery Stores

Coinme’s bitcoin ATMs have finished the New England sweep.

Coinme said Tuesday it is launching bitcoin ATMs across Vermont. The exchange will add 23 kiosks, supported by its partner Coinstar, a change sorting company, to grocery stores across the state, CEO Neil Bergquist told CoinDesk.

“The headline of the Bitcoin whitepaper is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. And literally what we’re doing is being a gateway to an electronic cash system. But you gotta be able to turn cash into electronic cash in order to do that,” Bergquist said in a phone interview.

Coinme allows users to buy up to $2,900 bitcoin with cash at around 21,000 Coinstar kiosks across the U.S. It’s an alternative to buying and selling their bitcoin online popular among people who pay remittances, according to Bergquist.

The kiosks, however, charge four percent in transaction fees – much higher than buying on the vast majority of online exchanges

Paying with in-person greenbacks comes with downsides. A reporter visited a local Coinme kiosk on Monday night to test out the service; the machine would not accept cash.

According to Bergquist, Coinme’s 100,000 customers generally visit a kiosk nine times a year; they purchase $600 on average. He noted that larger states drive higher sales volumes.

Ninety percent of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a bitcoin ATM, Berquist said.

But one state is absent from the list: New York. Its population of 19 million is governed by a crypto licensing regime more stringent than much of the country.

Coinme opened its first Coinstar bitcoin kiosk in May 2014. Now in 49 of 50 states, Bergquist said that Coinme hopes to expand into New York.

“The license application is still pending,” he said.