The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency
by
Ian Demartino
Published 2 Feb 2016
There is one other way to buy bitcoins anonymously with cash: Bitcoin ATMs. This method is highly dependent on your location, as Bitcoin ATMs are only starting to show up around the nation and the world. Some of them aren’t anonymous and require phone numbers and government ID scanning before they can be used but others are pretty accessible. The fees for these machines vary from reasonable to outrageous, so do your research before driving a long way. There are some online tools available to help you find these ATMs. Coinmap.org, for instance, is an open-source solution to finding Bitcoin ATMs, as well as businesses that accept payment in bitcoins.
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“BitBeat: Wedding Bells on the Blockchain.” MoneyBeat. September 26, 2014. Accessed May 20, 2015. http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/09/26/bitbeat-wedding-bells-on-the-blockchain/. 10 Cuthbertson, Anthony. “Kim Dotcom’s Blockchain MegaNet and Bitcoin ATMs Stolen.” International Business Times RSS. February 17, 2015. Accessed May 20, 2015. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cryptocurrency-round-kim-dotcoms-blockchain-meganet-bitcoin-atms-stolen-1488393. Chapter 6: Bitcoin: Anonymous or Pseudonymous? There’s going to be so much information about individuals floating around, that we want to protect privacy as much as we can…. But some of the bankers feel that an anonymous system is never going to make it, or even be something that they can get behind.
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April 22, 2015. Accessed June 22, 2015. http://coinjournal.net/interview-with-igot-founder-rick-day-regulation-has-absolutely-hindered-bitcoin-in-the-us. 8 Wile, Rob. “Think Fees On Normal ATMs Are Expensive? Check Out What It Costs To Use A Bitcoin ATM.” Business Insider. March 10, 2014. Accessed June 22, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/using-a-bitcoin-atm-is-actually-pretty-expensive-2014-3. 9 Balea, Judith. “Bitcoin Remittance Service Rebit Rolls out Zero Transaction Fees, KYC Policy.” Tech in Asia. January 15, 2015. Accessed June 22, 2015. https://www.techinasia.com/bitcoin-rebit-philippines-zero-fees-remittances-kyc/. 10 Buenaventura, Luis.
The Internet of Money
by
Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Published 28 Aug 2016
For a bank, the purpose of an ATM is reducing the overhead of having a human, and reducing the interaction to the shortest possible time for someone who has a pre-existing relationship with that bank. What does that have in common with the bitcoin ATM? Absolutely nothing. 8.7. Bitcoin ATM Experience Now let’s look at the experience of a bitcoin ATM. The average user of a bitcoin ATM is someone who has never seen bitcoin before. It is a person who doesn’t understand what bitcoin is, and the ATM is their first introduction to this currency. It’s a person who does not have a pre-existing relationship with anyone in the bitcoin space.
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We are beginning to approach things we have never seen before. This is not just a currency. Now, let’s look at how the bitcoin community is addressing this incredible potential with their design choices and metaphors. Oh boy, it’s a mess. 8.6. ATM Experience Let’s take a simple example. How many of you had an experience with a bitcoin ATM—or BTM, as it’s known? How was that experience? Who enjoyed it? Nobody, that’s about right. What is an ATM? ATMs have been around for 25 years now. What purpose does an ATM serve? What is its goal? Audience member: “It’s a cash dispensary.” Okay. When you interact as a person with an ATM: you have a pre-existing relationship with the bank or financial institution, you have a pre-existing balance, your primary objective is to get in, get cash, get out.
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Who takes bitcoin? Where can I spend this? How do I send it? How do I secure it? Will it get lost if I lose my phone? I have no clue. Why? Because this bloody infernal machine didn’t tell me anything. It just threw the bitcoin at me, and in 15 seconds it’s off to the next customer. If I was designing a bitcoin ATM, first of all, I’d put it in bodegas. Secondly, it wouldn’t have a lick of English on it; it would be all Spanish because I’m going to really push the remittance model. Thirdly, the first function on the ATM would be Send Money to Mexico City. That’s it. Because I want people to use the bitcoin for something.
Bitcoin for the Befuddled
by
Conrad Barski
Published 13 Nov 2014
The convenience of an ATM that charges comparable fees to Coinbase’s could potentially make it the ultimate Bitcoin middleman. And, indeed, some Bitcoin ATMs have been built and have proven very popular. The first was set up in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. However, it is impossible to know whether such ATMs will ever be widespread or be completely legal in the United States. The reason is that dollar bills and bitcoins share more than just irreversibility. They also both allow for a certain amount of anonymity. For this reason, a Bitcoin ATM would indirectly be a fantastic tool for anonymizing money for money laundering and other nefarious purposes.
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Nowadays, the risk of this happening is much lower due to the maturation of the financial Bitcoin ecosystem. Nonetheless, it’s always smart to store your bitcoins on these sites only for the absolute minimum amount of time possible. Bitcoin makes it extremely easy to manage your own money. Take advantage of this ability and don’t trust the management of your money to an exchange intermediary. BITCOIN ATMS: THE ULTIMATE BITCOIN MIDDLEMEN? As previously stated, one of the annoyances of purchasing bitcoins at this time is that buying them can be a bit cumbersome due to traditional financial instruments, like credit cards and bank wires, being reversible. But the most obvious irreversible financial instrument is the almighty dollar bill.
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For this reason, a Bitcoin ATM would indirectly be a fantastic tool for anonymizing money for money laundering and other nefarious purposes. And, unfortunately, many countries will not hesitate to ban anything that can aid a criminal, even if it would be tremendously beneficial to law-abiding citizens. Therefore, it’s difficult to predict how commonplace Bitcoin ATMs will be in the future. Buying Bitcoins the Efficient Way The most efficient way to buy bitcoins is directly from a currency exchange. This requires a bit more time and has a steeper learning curve than using a middleman, but it is a somewhat safer and more cost-effective way to buy a large amount of bitcoins. NOTE Using a Bitcoin exchange is similar to using a brokerage account (like E-Trade or Ameritrade).
The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order
by
Paul Vigna
and
Michael J. Casey
Published 27 Jan 2015
See the statement of April 3, 2014, at http://www.dob.texas.gov/public/uploads/files/Laws-Regulations/New-Actions/sm1037.pdf. That led a bunch of storefronts in tech-friendly Texan locales such as Austin: Dave Byknish and Paul Shelton, “Austin Gets 2nd Bitcoin ATM; It’s at a Gun Store,” kxan.com, March 2, 2014, http://kxan.com/2014/03/02/austin-gets-2nd-bitcoin-atm-its-at-a-gun-store/. New York’s Department of Financial Services’ ambitious superintendent: Benjamin M. Lawsky, “Notice of Intent to Hold Hearing on Virtual Currencies, Including Potential NYDFS Issuance of a ‘BitLicense,’” November 14, 2013, http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press2013/virtual-currency-131114.pdf.
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We’ve already discussed the uptick in entrepreneurial activity designed to make bitcoin more attractive and easier to use as currency, and we’ll see this in more depth in chapter 7. Some of the fruits of their labor have been rolled out and are constantly being updated: more user-friendly, smartphone-based wallets to make payments easier; better and more trustworthy online exchanges for buying and selling bitcoins; bitcoin ATMs that make it easier for ordinary people to cash in and out of their local currency; gift cards and other tricks that allow bitcoin holders to buy goods from major merchants such as Amazon that don’t accept the cryptocurrency; and tools such as bitcoin-loaded debit cards that will work with regular point-of-sale card-swipe machines and banks’ ATMs.
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All of that fosters the same chicken-and-egg problem that cryptocurrencies face in developed countries: if too few people are willing to use bitcoin, everyone else will be less willing to receive it. At least to start with, people will need infrastructure in place to make it easy and cheap to convert digital currencies into local currencies or dollars, which means low-cost exchanges, brokerages, and bitcoin ATMs. A number of people in the bitcoin community are working on just these issues. Nowhere, however, are the promises and pitfalls of cryptocurrencies more starkly rendered than in the world’s most populous nation: China. * * * China is a tantalizing market to bitcoiners, as it is to nearly all businessmen.
The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
by
Kevin Mitnick
,
Mikko Hypponen
and
Robert Vamosi
Published 14 Feb 2017
Transactions made with that cryptographic signature can be traced back to the coin, but the method by which you obtain the coin can be obscured—for example, by setting up a rock-solid anonymous e-mail address and using that e-mail address to set up an anonymous Bitcoin wallet using the Tor network. You buy Bitcoin in person, or anonymously online using prepaid gift cards, or find a Bitcoin ATM without camera surveillance. Depending on what surveillance factors could potentially reveal your true identity, every risk needs to be taken into account when choosing which purchasing method to use. You can then put these Bitcoins into what’s known as a tumbler. A tumbler takes some Bitcoins from me, some from you, and some from other people chosen at random and mixes them together.
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He said not even the FBI is able to crack the ultrasecure encryption used by the ransomware authors, and he added that because so many people have paid the attackers, the $500 cost has remained fairly consistent over the years.17 The FBI later came out to say it’s up to the individual companies to decide whether to pay or contact other security professionals. Simone’s mother, who had never purchased an app in her life, called her daughter at the eleventh hour only because she needed to figure out how to pay with the virtual currency. Simone said she found a Bitcoin ATM in Manhattan from which, after a software glitch and a service call to the ATM owner, she ultimately made the payment. At that day’s exchange rate, each Bitcoin was a bit more than $500. Whether these extortionists receive their payment in Bitcoin or in cash, they remain anonymous, although technically there are ways of tracing both forms of payment.
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However, that’s not a good choice if you want to be invisible, since it won’t allow anonymous setup. If you want to be invisible, don’t trust the VPN provider with your real information. This requires setting up a fake e-mail address in advance (see here) and using an open wireless network. Once you have that fake e-mail address, use Tor to set up a Bitcoin wallet, find a Bitcoin ATM to fund the wallet, and then use a tumbler to essentially launder the Bitcoin so it cannot be traced back to you on the blockchain. This laundering process requires setting up two Bitcoin wallets using different Tor circuits. The first wallet is used to send the Bitcoin to the laundering service, and the second is set up to receive the laundered Bitcoin.
The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum
by
Camila Russo
Published 13 Jul 2020
They arrived around a week or two before the event in the beginning of April and worked out of Anthony’s downtown office, a narrow, three-story house that gave off a ski lodge vibe with its brick walls and dark brown roof and window frames. A sign that read “Decentral” hung outside. A small sticker on the door read “Bitcoin accepted here,” which was true: inside was the first Bitcoin ATM in Toronto. Anthony’s Decentral office was used for work on his Kryptokit wallet and to host Bitcoin meetups and other crypto-related events. It was also a hub for the Ethereum team. Everyone was there, except for Mihai. Even Jeff came down from Amsterdam this time. They all slept in the house’s attic, except for a few, like Amir.
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When he heard about Bitcoin, the concept immediately made sense to him. He hired Jonathan Mohan, founder of Bitcoin NYC, as a Bitcoin mole. Mohan’s job was to be Steven’s eyes and ears on the ground, advising him on potential new investments. That’s how he’d heard about Ethereum’s crowdsale, and so there he was, sitting at a table where the first Bitcoin ATM in Toronto could be found, surrounded by the Ethereum crowd. Steven explained to the group, some of them reflexively skeptical about newcomers, that if they didn’t do the sale correctly there would be legal consequences. He went over some of the basics with them about the different kinds of exemptions the SEC gave for listing securities, basically, procedures that companies and issuers could follow to raise money lawfully.
Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World
by
Jeffrey Tucker
Published 7 Jan 2015
The blockchain is the fantastic digital innovation that provides not only a ledger for the currency unit bitcoin but also an indestructible public record of verified contracts with timestamps. It works without any public authority—or any third party at all. This wedding between my new friends, David Mondrus and Joyce Bayo, was recorded on the blockchain. They “burned” exactly 0.1 bitcoin through a CoinOutlet bitcoin ATM right there in front of all the witnesses. The transaction permits secure messaging, which, in this case, will be the wedding vows themselves, which were then permanently available for the world to see. What’s the advantage of this approach over the conventions? Well, if you know the way marriage licenses work, the jurisdictions don’t communicate with each other.
Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy
by
Melanie Swan
Published 22 Jan 2014
The project began as a brainstorming exercise to facilitate adoption and put Bitcoin into the hands of as many people as possible. Dominica was chosen as optimal because the country has a relatively small population, a high cellular telephony penetration rate, and a position as a regional education center, and it is the center of an active intraisland, intracurrency trade and remittance economy. Bitcoin ATMs and merchant point-of-sale (POS) systems are to be installed as part of the project to help foster ongoing use of Bitcoin after the coin drop. Coin drops or airdrops have been used in other situations; for example, “Nationcoin” has been used to shore up national identity. Iceland targeted residents with free cryptocurrency in the Auroracoin project, and similar efforts include Scotcoin, Spaincoin, and Greececoin, although there does not appear to have been a high degree of ongoing activity with these Nationcoin cryptocurrencies.171 One reason that Ecuador banned Bitcoin was because it plans to launch its own national cryptocurrency.172 Nationcoin could help bolster a sentiment of national patrimony, especially as many Eurozone nations have suffered from European Central Bank regulation impositions as a result of participating in the Euro.
Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts
by
David Gerard
Published 23 Jul 2017
(Coinbase ask to verify your US bank account by logging into it as you.240) You can buy bitcoins without ID at a price premium (and much greater risk) from less trustworthy sources, such as a business deal in a parking lot with someone you met on LocalBitcoins – those always work out well. You can buy bitcoins with ID at a price premium (and some risk) from a Bitcoin ATM, if you find one that works properly, and you’re prepared to wait ages for anything to happen. These used to be far easier to use, but then the authorities realised they were handy street-corner money-laundering devices and started requiring KYC/AML-quality identification. Other cryptocurrencies can be bought similarly, or you can buy bitcoins and then buy the other coin with those.
Bitcoin: The Future of Money?
by
Dominic Frisby
Published 1 Nov 2014
‘The world is looking for something – for a new trick. I think that crypto may well be that thing.’ I ask him when he first started looking at Bitcoin? ‘Early 2013. I went to a conference to find out what was going on. I bought some and played about to find out how it works. I tested a couple of exchanges, a Bitcoin ATM; I even bought a glass of wine at a bar in Chamonix. I’ve been fascinated ever since, but I’m still not confident in my heart of hearts as to why the world actually needs it, how it’s going to work in the future. And I also don’t fully trust the system, so haven’t yet committed significant capital.
Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street
by
Jeff John Roberts
Published 15 Dec 2020
Meanwhile, news of bitcoin was spreading far beyond the tech-y corridors of San Francisco as the mainstream press began to write serious stories about Satoshi’s creation. Much of this had to do with the price of bitcoin, which crossed above $100 in the summer of 2013 and kept on climbing. But it also had to do with novelties like bitcoin ATM machines popping up in coffee shops and a growing horde of art and merchandise that signified to everyone a new tribe was in town. The bitcoin buzz in the air also electrified the Coinbase crew’s apartment-turned-office on Bluxome Street as a steady stream of bitcoin pilgrims dropped by. These included people who would go on to become some of the most famous figures in the crypto clique.
Mastering Blockchain: Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts
by
Lorne Lantz
and
Daniel Cawrey
Published 8 Dec 2020
John Wolpert, Global Product Executive, Consensys Cofounder, IBM Blockchain Mastering Blockchain has managed to compile a vast amount of domain-specific knowledge into an easily understandable, concise reference. This book will be provided as reference material at Bitaccess for new hires to gain a quick, highly detailed, and accurate technical overview of the blockchain sector. Moe Adham, CEO, Bitcoin ATM provider Bitaccess Mastering Blockchain Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies, Smart Contracts, and Decentralized Applications Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey Mastering Blockchain by Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey Copyright © 2021 Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey. All rights reserved.
Health and Safety: A Breakdown
by
Emily Witt
Published 16 Sep 2024
One of these delis, Day & Night, blasted a never-changing playlist of music over the intersection, and commuters waiting for the trains above would sway absent-mindedly to “Sexual Healing” and “Everybody Everybody.” Andrew bought his cigarettes tax-free under the counter for seven dollars at Big Boy, which was also the only deli in the neighborhood with both a Bitcoin ATM and print copies of The New York Times. Big Boy was also said to be the heart of the mysterious trade in a psychoactive substance called K2, empty foil bags of which littered the streets. K2 was a catchall term for a general category of synthetic cannabinoids sprayed on plant matter and smoked.
Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy
by
Nathan Schneider
Published 10 Sep 2018
Past the sliding glass doors and the reception desk was a hallway where products made by members were on display—soaps, children’s clothes, wooden toys and bird feeders, a solar-powered reflective cooker. There were brochures for Espai de l’Harmonia, a hostel and wellness center, where one could receive Reiki treatments or take aikido lessons. Beyond, there was a small library, a Bitcoin ATM, and offices used by some of the seventy-five people who received stipends for the work they did to keep the CIC running. On certain days, Aurea Social hosted a market with produce fresh from the Catalan Supply Center—the co-op’s distribution warehouse in a town an hour or so to the south, which provided markets throughout the region with thousands of pounds of goods each month, most of which came from CIC farmers and producers.
Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
by
George Gilder
Published 16 Jul 2018
The dramatic paper capital gains of the original creators of bitcoins gave the early owners a huge incentive to make the system work. In November 2013 the price of a single bitcoin first spiked above the price of an ounce of gold. Many holders of the coin cashed in, using the proceeds to start companies that supply needed infrastructure for the movement, such as bitcoin exchanges, digital wallets, bitcoin ATMs, and bitcoin-trusted computing schemes. Bitcoin has already fostered thousands of new apps and firms and jobs. “Mining” equipment companies generated $500 million in revenues contriving ever-faster computer architectures and chip designs. The Chinese company Bitmain, the first to focus on ASIC technology for mining, became the world’s most profitable chip company in 2017, with reported likely profits of four billion dollars (compared with Nvidia’s three billion).
Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud
by
Ben McKenzie
and
Jacob Silverman
Published 17 Jul 2023
In El Zonte, he had become a major entrepreneur, property owner, and community leader. He wasn’t in town and tried to connect us with others who were perhaps suffering from journalist fatigue. (We were hardly the first reporters to roll through town that summer.) To kill time, we grabbed breakfast at a local hotel. Jacob spotted a Bitcoin ATM and decided to purchase a little as an experiment, despite a worker warning him the machine sometimes ate your money while providing no Bitcoin. Paying a fee of about 10 percent, Jacob managed to buy thirty-two dollars’ worth of Bitcoin and send it to a wallet on his burner phone. “No KYC/AML,” Jacob said proudly, referring to Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering processes, which are standard in mainstream finance and often ignored in crypto.
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by
Zeke Faux
Published 11 Sep 2023
The country was on the brink of defaulting on its foreign debts, and the persistent gang violence that had once made it the murder capital of the world was flaring up anew. Was the answer to El Salvador’s problems to go all-in on a volatile digital currency that nobody else in the real world was using? But Bukele really did follow through. He gave thirty dollars in Bitcoin to each citizen—a few days’ wages for a farmworker—plunked down Bitcoin ATMs in every town plaza, and told businesses to accept Bitcoin as payment. And with the country on the edge of a debt crisis, Bukele told off international creditors, saying he’d solve El Salvador’s financial problems with Bitcoin instead. “#Bitcoin is FU money!” he tweeted. El Salvador became a country-sized advertisement for Bitcoin, and many of the crypto enthusiasts I interviewed told me that the plan was such a success that other countries would soon follow suit.
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
by
Adam Greenfield
Published 29 May 2017
(The fact that people are actually doing so at scale at every hour of the day is attested to by a fascinating site called Fiatleak, on which you can see torrents of value gushing out of national currencies in real time—chiefly, at any time I’ve ever consulted it, the Chinese yuan.) If you were dead set on exchanging fiat cash for BTC physically, you could perhaps avail yourself of one of the planet’s few Bitcoin ATMs, most of which were located in hipster enclaves like London’s Shoreditch. But describing their coverage as “sparse” would be generous in the extreme; as of the end of 2015, there were a grand total of eight such machines deployed in all of New York City, for example, including two deep in what was then the decidedly unhipsterish, mostly Hasidic neighborhood of Crown Heights.
Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again
by
Brittany Kaiser
Published 21 Oct 2019
There was a certain island I could go to. We got off the phone, and within an hour he’d booked and paid for a flight; he sent me the confirmation number. In the meantime, I’d hide out. I called my sister and asked her to liquidate the Bitcoin I had, explaining to her how to do it, where to go to a Bitcoin ATM near her, and how to send it to me via Western Union, so I wouldn’t create as much trackable data by swiping my bank card. My Bitcoin savings amounted to about a thousand dollars. It would get me through for a little while. When the first of many articles based on my evidence and interviews came out in the Guardian that day, I forwarded it to her.
Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
by
Andy Greenberg
Published 15 Nov 2022
That humble starting point was fine with Miller, who had little idea at the time of how the dark web drug trade even worked. When Rabenn asked Miller to start making undercover heroin buys, he initially couldn’t figure out how to buy bitcoins, not to mention drugs themselves. He drove two and a half hours to San Jose to find a physical Bitcoin ATM where he could convert dollars to bitcoins rather than simply use an online exchange. Even then, Miller discovered that after transaction fees he hadn’t bought nearly as much cryptocurrency as he’d intended and could purchase only half a gram of heroin, instead of the two grams he’d planned on for his first undercover operation.
Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
by
Don Tapscott
and
Alex Tapscott
Published 9 May 2016
The first facet borrows from science fiction author William Gibson, that the future is here; its infrastructure is just unevenly distributed. Had Greek citizens known about bitcoin during their country’s economic crash in 2015, they still would’ve been hard-pressed to locate a bitcoin exchange or a bitcoin ATM anywhere in Athens. They wouldn’t have been able to transfer their drachmas into bitcoins to hedge against the plummeting fiat currency. Computer scientist Nick Szabo and information security expert Andreas Antonopoulos both argued that robust infrastructure matters and can’t be bootstrapped during catastrophes.
Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
by
Parag Khanna
Published 18 Apr 2016
Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research, a pioneer in geo-social demographics, has tracked how digital natives naturally view the Internet as a portal of empowerment through which they discover and develop this broader set of identities and hold them to be as significant as those into which they are born.*7 In 2014, the online community BitNation began piloting a block-chain-based ID system: Anonymous, decentralized, and secure, it provides a hybrid of a cyber passport and a Bitcoin ATM card. Virtual currencies have accelerated the rise of a borderless digital marketplace, within which multiplying cloud communities form what the political economist Michel Bauwens calls a “P2P civilization.”5 The MIT Media Lab co-founder Sandy Pentland calls these relational modes of identity building the new “social physics.”6 As the balance shifts between the importance of the physical and the virtual where, the government monopoly on media, narrative, and identity is disappearing forever.
The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
by
Laura Shin
Published 22 Feb 2022
(Vitalik wanted Ethereum to work on different software clients so that a bug in one wouldn’t take the whole blockchain down; the entities on the network could run another one while the buggy one was fixed.) On January 1, 2014, when it was five degrees Fahrenheit outside, Vitalik attended the opening for Decentral, which featured Canada’s second Bitcoin ATM.23 A lively crowd—nearly all men—packed into the narrow space. Vitalik was dressed in a black sweater with thin blue, purple, and white stripes; others kept their fur-hooded coats on. The most interesting person Anthony talked to all night was Joseph Lubin, a bald, soft-spoken Toronto native who had a habit of standing with one arm crossed, grasping the other.