Bitcoin ATMs are sprouting all over the place.
Just yesterday, it was announced that Australia’s third bitcoin ATM had launched at a brand-new shopping center in Melbourne.
Today, the next location receiving an ATM is Tokyo, Japan, according to Tech In Asia. Located in the city’s Roppongi entertainment district, the Robocoin-manufactured machine is located at The Pink Cow, a bar/restaurant popular with Tokyo’s expat community.
The location of the machine comes as no surprise, either. The Pink Cow is said to have become Japan’s first restaurant to accept bitcoin payments — starting in late July of last year.
Traci Consoli,a California native who owns The Pink Cow told Tech In Asia that here ultimate goal here is to spread the word about bitcoin and help increase adoption of the digital currency.
“If someone isn’t the guinea pig, the first to do it and say it works, then it will take twice as long to get the ball rolling in Japan,” she said. “Japan has been slow and skeptical.”
Despite national skeptism, the bitcoin culture at The Pink Cow has grown significantly over the past year, from “six or eight nerds” to over fifty people at some points.
“Almost every day there are people coming to pay with Bitcoins,” she says. “There was definitely a drop-off after Mt. Gox, so the new people must have gotten scared. But still, 50 people showed up at the Bitcoin meetup we hosted a month after it crashed.”
Of course, Tokyo was home to Mt. Gox — the community’s oldest and once-largest exchange.
Following a long run of mismanagement and incompetence, the exchange came to a collapse earlier this year, bringing over 700,000 investor bitcoins with them (worth over $400 million).
Since launch, the ATM at The Pink Cow has reportedly been used 75 times to buy and sell bitcoins.