Turning treasury dollars into ATMs

[HedgedAndLevered]

I'm in a major US city.
If I want to go get cash from my BofA account, I can get to 8 BofA ATMs in less than a mile walk. It costs me nothing to go bank -> cash -> bank.
I'm sure many of you agree with me that this is unacceptable: If we want people to be using Dash, we need an easy, frictionless exchange.
We need a more organized effort to install Dash ATMs.

Apparently we're willing to spend $500,000 in a giveaway on an exchange that doesn't even require people to download the wallet.
how about we build 20 ATMs around 10 major cities, then make the giveaway tied to people interacting with ATMs? This would have a far greater impact. Especially now that bitcoin is going more mainstream with its high fees. When your average person goes to buy btc, they're going to notice the large spread and the $6 transaction fee. If we can have the treasury subsidize fees, and they can trade for far less, they're going to be more likely to choose dash instead of BTC.

There's been a problem so far that I've noticed. I've seen a few proposals where a team has scrapped together a few ATMs in a high traffic place, but we need to think bigger and smarter now that we have more funding. This includes determining where installing the ATMs is going to have the greatest impact.

Unfortunately, I don't have the answers. I'm making this thread to brainstorm better ways to turn Dash treasury funds into ATMs.

I know we have that partnership with Alt36 to integrate dash into their ATMs, but is there anything we can do with our huge money pile to expand the launch? If we provide the funds for them to hire more people, or provide incentives for increased production, I'm sure we could make this happen.

A few questions to spur discussions:

1. Should we spend more treasury funds on installing ATMs?
2. How much does it take to bring one ATM to a physical location currently?
3. Is there anything we can do to reduce this cost?
4. How should we go about determining which cities/locations we should focus on first?
5. How should we go about determining which vendors to partner with?

 

[Ftoole]

I am all for expanding th atm footprint only thing in the us thier is a lot of regulation in running one so we definitely need a partner who can handle that. If we had 100 partners in the us 2 in each sate and aim for similar saturation in other countries that would be awesome.

 

[Ftoole]

Also more partners with atms. Means more atms which drives competition to lower the cost of fees to buy and sell dash.

 

[tungfa]

more ATM's is great
but companies / people coming and asking for x amount of money to buy ATM's (for themselves) is not how it should work
a propper biz plan should be presented
+ companies/people should invest at least 50% on their own and then (possible) as for funding to round this up or such
(otherwise we are fuming their whole ATM network / they ask for the general crazy ATM fees of x % , and the community fiunded all , but still has to deal with those fees - know what I mean)

 

[thesavoyard]

I'm going to tell you now, there are a lot of difficulties people aren't aware of. Exchanges, banks, lease space, and lack of choice of ATM suppliers. Not to mention no exchange that buys and sells Dash for most currencies is supported by General Bytes. Lamassu may be different.

You also cannot get a business account approved on any major exchange. Coinbase put all business accounts on hold and Bitstamp just ignores all applications. You may have better luck if your currency is USD, but in Euros, we're limited to a few exchanges that aren't very cooperative. I suggest you target existing operators. Most people do not have what it takes to get through all the challenges. I'm just being honest, it's worse than you think.

I am working with https://www.die-finanzpiloten.de/

We're looking at solutions that could make it easier. We'll keep you posted.

 

[jimbursch]

Most people do not have what it takes to get through all the challenges. I'm just being honest, it's worse than you think.

Thank you for pointing that out. People toss out proposals for ATMs like it's a simple matter of buying a machine and plugging it in.

 

[HedgedAndLevered]

I'm sure its more difficult that it seems and that there are more moving parts than I've thought of. That's my point, we need to spend some resources on making sure we're going through this whole difficult process in the most efficient way we can, so as little time and money is wasted as possible.
Unfortunately, we're not in a spot where we can say, Ok, we have $X, that will give us Y machines in City Z. We need to get to that spot. The way it is loosely organized now is the whole problem, isn't it?
Imagine if we could get it to the spot where it actually is "a simple matter of buying a machine and plugging it in". That would be an amazing accomplishment. Lets do it!
...how do we start?

 

[thesavoyard]

I'm sure its more difficult that it seems and that there are more moving parts than I've thought of. That's my point, we need to spend some resources on making sure we're going through this whole difficult process in the most efficient way we can, so as little time and money is wasted as possible.
Unfortunately, we're not in a spot where we can say, Ok, we have $X, that will give us Y machines in City Z. We need to get to that spot. The way it is loosely organized now is the whole problem, isn't it?
Imagine if we could get it to the spot where it actually is "a simple matter of buying a machine and plugging it in". That would be an amazing accomplishment. Lets do it!
...how do we start?

Infrastructure, that's one of the main things. We need exchanges, we need banking, we need affordable legal advice.

 

[Miner237]

I'm sure its more difficult that it seems and that there are more moving parts than I've thought of. That's my point, we need to spend some resources on making sure we're going through this whole difficult process in the most efficient way we can, so as little time and money is wasted as possible.
Unfortunately, we're not in a spot where we can say, Ok, we have $X, that will give us Y machines in City Z. We need to get to that spot. The way it is loosely organized now is the whole problem, isn't it?
Imagine if we could get it to the spot where it actually is "a simple matter of buying a machine and plugging it in". That would be an amazing accomplishment. Lets do it!
...how do we start?

Hello I could probably help with some of this info. If you want to fully regulate and start a US national program you need to get 50 state MT licenses, for that we need about $175k first year and $135k each year after to maintain it, it's been pretty well documented.

Each Kiosk costs about $100-200 per month rent per location and can cost the same $100-200 to maintain, insure and collect cash from it depending on location and volume.

Like thesavoyard says here

Infrastructure, that's one of the main things. We need exchanges, we need banking, we need affordable legal advice.

This is the main problem, with such a high cost to entry and there is such a high risk of missing something and being made example of by law enforcement not many people are going to want to start something like this. I have been contacting several of the larger general byte customers and the consensus seems if GB adds dash support to the back end hosted platform these operators would add DASH. There still needs to be a good clearing house for the operator to convert fiat to dash.

Also please give you feedback to my idea of a DASH sponsored program for local DASH Kiosk here https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/dash-kiosk-pre-proposal.16523

 

[thesavoyard]

Hi, can we get this manufacturer on to Dash? http://coinoutletatm.com/

I don't think General Bytes is going to work out. Like PinIdea and Baikal they are blowing it with their customers. No quality control, late delivery, defective products and horrible support.

I've spoken with BGST, our local competitor and he agrees, he thinks he may be done with GB as well.

My machines were a month late, had broken LED lights, weren't configured to connect to the server, were delivered to the wrong address, the server didn't allow customer registration, the recyclers are set only to USD but we only work in EUR. There are no support videos for my machine model, don't think if you order an L+ model those videos are helpful. Plus the info in the videos is spread out, you have to watch the BATM 2 video to do the server, because he didn't want to repeat the info in the server video...

BGST has machines that give out too much euros and no contact from support.

They just keep asking for pics that I already sent and not addressing the issue with me.

 

[thesavoyard]

Martijn from General Bytes is flying a technician out to Amsterdam to repair our machines, we should be fully operational very soon. We also may have a business account on an exchange that does 2 way Dash!