Bittiraha, a Finnish Bitcoin exchange, announced this week that it had installed a Bitcoin ATM at a record store at the Helsinki Railway Station.
How about that for a merger of 19th, 20th and 21st Century technologies?
The machine will accept euro banknotes and transfer the BTC equivalent to a user’s digital wallet. Bittiraha is handling the back end of the exchange.
Commercial director of the Levykauppa Äx record store, Jyri Lipponen, said the move was mostly driven by a desire to experiment with marketing. “We weren’t sure about anything when it comes to Bitcoin, but we most definitely want to participate in anything which could shake up the traditional foundations of society,” he said.
The store itself has yet to integrate Bitcoin payment processing.
Bittiraha claims its ATM is the first in Europe to find a permanent home; less-than-permanent ATM installations have already gone in in Stockholm and Bratislava.
According to Bittiraha, the shopping area that houses Levykauppa Äx and now the machine sees daily traffic of 200,000 people.
The ATM itself is manufactured by Lamassu, a machine-maker that has already sold a Bitcoin ATM to one company in Sweden, and elsewhere in 12 other countries.
Lamassu is accepting orders for its third run of Bitcoin ATMs, which go for about 5,000 USD a piece.
Worldwide, Bitcoin ATMs have been a hit. The world’s first, in Vancouver, saw weekly transactions approach 1,000,000 CAD.