TL;DR Breakdown
- Uruguay installs first Bitcoin ATM.
- BTC ATMs continue to get dominant in South America.
- BTC ATM number globally now over 30,000.
Uruguay has become the 11th South American country to encourage crypto adoption after installing its first Bitcoin ATM publicly.
Local media in Uruguay reports that the country’s first Bitcoin ATM was installed in the coastal city of Punta del Este, a major tourist attraction in the region. Two crypto firms, URUBit and inBierto, were the brains behind the first crypto ATM in the country. However, Adolfo Varela, the CEO of inBierto, confirmed that the initiative was 100% funded by the government of Uruguay.
inBierto is a crypto investment platform, who is also a member of the Uruguayan Chamber of Fintech (Cámara Uruguaya de Fintech), a startup accelerator focused on the fintech sector. URUBit is a decentralized token created in Uruguay and deployed in the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
The machine supports withdrawal and deposits of five cryptocurrencies which are; BTC, Binance Coin (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), Ferret Token (FRT), and Urubit (URUB). FRT and URUB are in-house cryptocurrencies managed and distributed by URUBit and inBierto, respectively.
Prior to Uruguay’s involvement, South America hosted 79 ATMs, representing 0.2% of global BTC ATM installations.
Bitcoin ATM in South America
According to crypto analytics provider Coin ATM Radar, Colombia leads the South American market with 31 crypto ATM installations to date and followed by Brazil and Argentina at 22 and 11 installations, respectively.
Other South American countries such as Ecuador, Venezuela, Aruba, Saint Kits, and Nevis have also installed one crypto ATM.
Bitcoin ATMs remain a technological breakthrough in the crypto world. It is one of the fantastic ways users can obtain digital coins without any inconvenience since they were introduced in 2014. In 2021, over 20,000 Bitcoin ATMs were reportedly installed worldwide, pushing the total number of machines to 34,000 globally.
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