Need bitcoins? New ATM in Denver area dispenses them

There’s a new kind of ATM in metro Denver. It doesn’t dispense dollars. It churns out bitcoins, a digital currency that is backed by no national banks. A fledgling company, XB Teller, opened the ATM the summer.
Noah Berger, the CEO of XB Teller, says buyers feed dollars into the machine to purchase bitcoins. The bitcoins then get sent to the buyer’s bitcoin address — sort of like an email address. Berger admits the whole idea can be tough to understand since bitcoins can’t be held in your hand.
‘I think calling it bitcoin to begin with was sort of a funny choice because no there are no coins at all,” he says. “I think it’s just a way to invoke the image of money in people’s mind.”

This post was published at Colorado Public Radio on Sep 19, 2014.