Canadian crypto exchange Coinsquare has announced that it made a controlling investment in Just Cash, a fintech company connecting regular ATMs to the crypto sphere.
Just Cash operates software that can allow everyday ATMs to sell crypto assets to customers directly, without the need for “new hardware, additional capital investments by the ATM operator or a mobile application by the user to purchase cryptocurrency through the ATM.”
Coinsquare has also previously dealt in precious metals trading, but it shuttered this service in 2018 and transitioned to being a cryptocurrency exchange only. This new expansion into ATMs allows the company to once again diversify its offerings.
Just Cash is able to do the legwork to connect ATMs to Coinsquare’s crypto platform, and Coinsquare’s sizeable liquidity will allow these ATMs to conveniently service more customers than Just Cash could manage alone. However, it is not explicitly clear how many ATMs are working at the moment.
In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Coinsquare’s CEO Cole Diamond claimed that “there is an existing network of 250,000 non-banking ATMs in the United States.” He added that “Just Cash has developed a solution to convert those machines into cryptocurrency ATMs, to be able to both buy and sell through those machines … There’s no need to put cash in these machines.”
Using these ATMs, cash directly from users’ bank accounts are used in crypto transactions, and paper wallets containing public and private keys are printed out. Users are also able to sell crypto assets using a mobile app. There are still solutions in progress to connect these paper wallets to the network more directly.
Crypto ATMs and Bitcoin Adoption
“Right now, there is a lack of mainstream cryptocurrency adoption because most people are intimidated by the process to acquire it,” Diamond said in the company statement. ���By using the millions of existing ATMs around the world, we can now bridge the gap and give new users the easiest and most familiar experience to purchase cryptocurrency.” In the long term, Diamond expects that the company’s will apply this software to roughly 250,000 machines .
Just Cash “will operate under the Coinsquare brand in the future,” according to the press release. Just Cash’s co-founder Todd Lawrence said, “We're excited to join forces with Coinsquare and work toward enabling millions of ATMs with our software,” so this should give some idea into the possible range of customers that can access cryptocurrency with Coinsquare’s more sizable liquidity.
Diamond also alluded to a new project, still under wraps, that Coinsquare is working on, “By the end of next year at the absolute latest,” he told Bitcoin Magazine, “it’ll be in every neighborhood across America, with a significant ramp up from here to the next eighteen months.”
“Right now, we’re giving them the ability to buy [crypto], and it’s sitting on a paper wallet. We’ve got to give them the opportunity to immediately access the entire ecosystem, and we’re creating those products that take us into that next level,” he said, adding that he couldn’t go into details at this time.