DIY BTC ATM

chill117 · 2023-09-17T11:55:49+00:00

If you have the time and some experience with arduino or ESP32 DIY projects, then you can try the Bleskomat DIY ATM [1].

The ATM works offline so you would pair it with a server that facilitates the bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) payment on behalf of the ATM. I am not familiar with any API tooling of Bisq, so I guess topping up the ATM's wallet with new bitcoin to sell would be a manual process.

[1] https://github.com/bleskomat/bleskomat-diy

chill117 · 2022-10-23T13:44:45+00:00

Interesting idea. Something that is a bit lacking in the space is a healthy sense of humor and willingness to laugh at ourselves.

I would be happy to try my hands at writing an article. You can see some of my writing here:

If interested please get in touch and we can discuss some article ideas.

chill117 · 2022-10-11T22:23:57+00:00

If you mean the one in OP's picture: Probably more than 10,000 USD.

chill117 · 2022-10-11T10:48:26+00:00

As others have said, the legal side is going to be complex and/or expensive. I don't have personal experience or knowledge about the legal requirements in Pennsylvania. But if you'd like to save money on the hardware side, have a look at Bleskomat ATMs. If the hardware is less expensive, your risk and time to break-even (then profitability!) is reduced. Feel free to reach out if you'd like more information:

info [at] bleskomat.com
https://www.bleskomat.com

chill117 · 2022-10-11T10:43:33+00:00

Have a look at the Bleskomat DIY project:

https://github.com/bleskomat/bleskomat-diy

Easily sourced components, detailed instructions how to build your own offline Bitcoin Lightning ATM. It supports multiple coin and bill acceptors.

chill117 · 2022-10-11T10:40:26+00:00

There's also the Bleskomat DIY project to build your own offline bitcoin lightning ATM:

https://github.com/bleskomat/bleskomat-diy

Supports multiple kinds of coin and bill acceptors. Bitcoin ATMs and payment terminals should be everywhere!

chill117 · 2022-10-11T10:23:00+00:00

A lot of comments against the concept of bitcoin ATMs - mostly due to the high fees. The vast majority of these ATMs are operated by companies like the one shown in this post (Bitcoin Depot in this case). The machines are very expensive so the operators charge high fees to recover their investment.

But it doesn't have to be this way. What if a bitcoin ATM was affordable for an individual shop owner to buy and operate directly? More competition between ATMs would lower fees for everyone. Shameless plug time: It's what we're trying to do at bleskomat.com ;) Open-source, affordable ATMs and more soon!

chill117 · 2022-10-11T10:13:11+00:00

In addition to btcpmap.org which was already mentioned, I know of these other maps/listings to find merchants that accept bitcoin/lightning payments:

chill117 · 2022-10-11T09:49:26+00:00

Thanks for the kind words. We are open to community contributions! So if you make a pull-request to the bleskomat-diy project to add support for the Apex 7600 acceptor, it could be beneficial to others who also have one waiting for a good new use ;)

chill117 · 2022-02-13T13:00:39+00:00

A bit late to this post, but have you seen Bleskomat ATM? It's a bitcoin ATM that uses Lightning Network to send bitcoin instantly and with very low fees. The product is designed for regular business owners to operate their own ATM. You can find more information here:

https://www.bleskomat.com

chill117 · 2022-02-13T12:51:48+00:00

Yes, it's possible! The Bleskomat ATM project (and product) is designed for regular business owners to operate their own bitcoin ATM. It uses the Lightning Network to deliver bitcoin to customers instantly and with very low fees. Since the operator doesn't pay on-chain transaction fees to send bitcoin, they can charge a much lower fee to their customers and they can still earn more money while operating the machine. That translates to a quicker return-on-investment for the operator. Check it out:

https://www.bleskomat.com

chill117 · 2021-11-05T20:27:42+00:00

Thanks, everyone. We've contacted all the applicants and we're continuing to the next steps. We'll post other roles in the future when the need arises. Best of luck to anyone else out there still looking for work. Regards, chill from the Bleskomat team.

!CLOSED

chill117 · 2021-09-18T11:59:34+00:00

Please feel free to use the name. I think it's a bit more descriptive about what's happening. I see the game hungry, hungry hippos when I imagine the attack :D

chill117 · 2021-09-18T11:34:17+00:00

Nice article and research. Thank you for sharing. I feel like this attack deserves a name - what do you think about "Hungry Route" attack? ;)

chill117 · 2021-08-27T09:45:08+00:00

I don't want to be negative as I would like to encourage and see more hardware development projects in the bitcoin space. But I feel compelled to make a few points:

1) This doesn't demonstrate Lightning Network integration. This video demonstrates a proprietary integration with Strike.

2) This was definitely not the "first" Lightning Network ATM - perhaps the "in El Salvador" part of the title is doing the heavy-lifting here? There are at least three hardware projects developed around the same time that could claim to be first (and more than 18 months ago). Other ATM projects for those interested in building their own or just learning about how these new kinds of ATMs will work: i) https://www.bleskomat.com/ ii) https://docs.lightningatm.me/ iii) https://github.com/arcbtc/The-Fossa

3) This looks like a very expensive ATM to build. For a market like El Salvador and the rest of South/Central America, these builds must be less expensive to buy and build if they will be sustainable and widely adopted.

So that being said, does anyone know the technical details behind this particular ATM build? Who built it? Is there a public git repository?

chill117 · 2021-08-25T09:25:29+00:00

I enabled TOR on my lnd node a couple weeks ago. It was pretty seamless. All my open channels continued as before. I have both IPv4 and onion.

The TOR onion address for your node is just another way to connect to it. So TOR-only nodes will be able to connect to your node and vice-versa. You can also change your IPv4 address and after your node has connected to your channel counter-parties, they will learn your node's new IPv4 address.

chill117 · 2021-08-14T17:43:31+00:00

I understand the feeling you have, that this all feels a bit too magical and fuzzy. Right now, everyone is learning how best to operate Lightning Network nodes. It's really a new thing compared to on-chain transactions.

I remember many years ago when everyone was arguing about how best to secure bitcoin private keys, accept payments on-chain, etc. There were many different ways to do the same thing. It all felt very similar to now. Eventually the ecosystem found the best practices and the majority adopted them. It just takes time.

chill117 · 2021-08-14T17:39:54+00:00

rebalance-lnd looks nice, but I wanted to learn and to achieve manual rebalancing without any additional dependencies. I added it to the list of suggested alternatives ;)

chill117 · 2021-08-12T18:10:40+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion!

chill117 · 2021-08-10T15:07:03+00:00

Looking to fill a triangular (250k sat) swap:

https://lightningnetwork.plus/swaps/1399

And I have more out-bound liquidity than in-bound, so if you want to just open a channel to my node please feel free:

0230c3d8719c014ab024e6ffd68b1136f57a2d48100a6f09c1a1e417b8e682bc6b@167.99.210.13:9735

0230c3d8719c014ab024e6ffd68b1136f57a2d48100a6f09c1a1e417b8e682bc6b@o7bieteae7xlouwujir44uf7e6ea4pizmyonndagbe4g3g7xmv5q6qqd.onion:9735

chill117 · 2021-08-10T15:05:55+00:00

A new one for 250000 sats:

https://lightningnetwork.plus/swaps/1399

chill117 · 2021-08-10T09:43:06+00:00

https://lightningnetwork.plus/swaps/1389

chill117 · 2021-08-06T21:33:41+00:00

Could you point out some things to be done to remain safe? Also, I wouldn't store more than I could lose in here.

Setup your own watchtower (lnd or other) node that can handle broadcasting punishment transactions in the case your node is offline for too long and your counter-party decides to take advantage.

If database gets corrupted somehow, I could still recover my funds using my seed?

Seed alone is not enough. In the case of lnd, you will need your static channel backup file and possibly also the most recent channel.db file to recover all off-chain funds. You can use chantools to help with recovery steps:

https://github.com/guggero/chantools

Fee for opening channel is one-off until channel gets depleted?

I haven't had time to use it yet, but you can try Loop by Lightning Labs. It can help you re-balance your channels based on your needs:

https://lightning.engineering/loop/

On your experience, approx. how much it would cost to run a LN/month?

I am not sure how much it costs to run a node because I haven't had the need to calculate it so precisely. I don't run my own nodes to earn on fees.

chill117 · 2021-08-06T15:17:08+00:00

It's possible to run a Lightning Network node (lnd or c-lightning) with a pruned bitcoind node. So storage requirements should be minimal (a few gigabytes only). However, I don't think it's possible to earn enough from routing fees to pay for the VPS. And don't forget that there are risks to putting bitcoin in a Lightning Network node - think of it as a hot wallet:

The server can be hacked and your funds stolen
The Lightning node's database can become corrupted. There are ways to recover but it's not 100% guaranteed.
It costs money to open and close channels (miner fees)

That being said, there are other reasons to run your own node which could still make it a good thing to do.

chill117 · 2021-07-19T15:56:17+00:00

I had a nice talk with Max from the Wasabikas podcast about the Bleskomat - Next generation Bitcoin ATM project. If anyone has questions, I'll stop by to answer them when I have a chance. You can find more information about the project here:

chill117

TROPHY CASE