The American supermarket giant is one of the largest, if not the largest retailer in the world. So when a company like Walmart starts accepting Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, it is tremendously good news. Walmart seems to be moving step by step closer to full adoption of Bitcoin. Who knows, they may even start accepting it as a form of payment soon! In fact, they recently installed thousands of Bitcoin vending machines.
Walmart’s Bitcoin ATMs
In fact, the installation of these ATMs by Walmart is part of a pilot. 200 machines will be installed in phase 1, but the plans are to add at least 8,000 to this. According to Bloomberg, one of America’s largest news sources, Walmart is collaborating in this project with the manufacturer Coinstar and the broker CoinMe.
At such a machine, customers can enter bill money, just like you can at a normal ATM. In exchange for the money they enter, they receive a voucher containing a conversion code. This code can then be exchanged for Bitcoin after creating a CoinMe account. So it is impossible to do this anonymously.
Unfortunately, there is a small catch. Walmart charges a huge fee in this matter. In fact, the fee you have to pay is a whopping 11% in total. So you could say that it’s almost not worth the effort. In fact, to redeem $100 you pay $11.
Hopefully this will become cheaper in the future and the machines at Walmart will be a great success! This could mean that they will also accept Bitcoin as a method of payment. Let us hope so!
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