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Maltese ATM: There and back

20 July 2018 17:18, UTC
Daniil Danchenko

Malteese crypto startup Moon Zebra recently launched a first two way atm that allows anyone to buy and sell bitcoin and litecoin for euro.

Machine itself was strategically placed in Sliema, one of the main centers of the shopping and recreation of the whole malta, where most of the tourists stop.

Moon Zebra is a result of the collaboration between Leon Siegemund - rather influential figure in the community and renown bitcoin evangelist and Jonas Abrahamsson , with a goal to bring bitcoins to the masses.

That's one of the reasons why Moon Zebra’s atm was created without solely B2B orientation, but also with simple clients in mind. Minimal amount of euro, required for the deposit is just 50 euro. ATM creators wanted to make more simple solution, that would allow it’s clients to buy or sell Bitcoins and other digital currencies fast and easy.

One of the members of the Moon Zebra’s team Markus Behmann told Bitnewstoday.com more about their ATM in a exclusive interview.

So, how does your ATM work?

Our ATM is a vending machine, not an exchange. We only accept fiat currencies and dispense fiat currencies. The actual purchase happens on an exchange, our ATM is just the physical interface , it’s quite like buying it on your phone, just that you can pay with cash instead of credit card/bank transaction

And how much for one unit?

The cost of each ATM is made up of hardware and shipping expenses, as well as software setup and development costs. The final price is approximately €20.000 per unit. We will offer a cryptocurrency ATM turnkey setup solution as a service to other businesses soon.

And how much is your fee?

Our fees are variable depending on demand and supply. As far as I know, we currently offer the buy and sell rates that look like this: 7.7% for purchase and 6% for sale. It is noteworthy, that rates of physical ATMs like ours need to be a little bit higher than those of online exchanges due to the running and maintenance costs related to cash handling, exchange fees, and price volatility hedging.

Is it secure? After all a lot of people in the world of cryptocurrencies are very sensitive when it comes to the security of their funds.

Nothing is ever 100% secure, but our security expert Jonas is not only a tech wizard but also almost paranoid when it comes to security.