10 Years of Coinme: Then and Now

In 2014, when most people had never even heard the words “crypto” or “bitcoin,” Coinme co-founders Neil Bergquist and Michael Smyers were busy buying three bitcoin ATMs. The price of a single bitcoin at the time was about $400. Someone who put $20 into the ATM could now be sitting on over $3,000 of bitcoin at current prices. Ten years later, their company operates the largest network of cryptocurrency ATMs in the world, thanks to large-scale partnerships with companies like Coinstar and MoneyGram.

Now that cryptocurrency has gone mainstream, everyday consumers want more access to opportunities to convert crypto to cash and vice versa quickly and securely, and demand for the company’s bitcoin ATMs has grown accordingly. It’s eclipsed the milestone of conducting more than $1 billion in sales.

Early Days: Anticipating the 2017 Boom

Public demand for bitcoin ATMs has come a long way since Coinme’s early days in 2014, when Neil Bergquist, the company’s CEO, worked with Washington state regulators to ensure compliance for its handful of ATMs situated at locations like a local restaurant and shopping mall in Seattle.

At the time, crypto was yet to experience the first of several booms in public awareness and trading activity that would drive massive increases in the price of bitcoin, ethereum, and eventually altcoins. However, while the general public was still largely unaware of cryptocurrency, massive jumps in bitcoin trading volume and value in 2013 were sending signals that a boom could be on the horizon.

In the closing months of 2013, the value of bitcoin shot up exponentially, rising from $214 in November to a high of roughly $1,200 in December and eventually ending the year at $805.

The following year saw extreme volatility as regulators and exchanges adjusted to increased interest, but prices began to steadily rise in 2015 and 2016, culminating in the now-famous 2017 boom that brought crypto to large-scale public awareness, where it has remained at center stage in the world of finance for the past seven years.

By this point, Bergquist and Smyers had already worked in partnership with state regulators to establish a foothold for their bitcoin ATMs in the Western states, leaving them in a prime position to meet the public’s calls for legitimate access to the now-booming cryptocurrency.

Growing With the Crypto Industry

In 2017, Coinme had a nice head start on the growth of the mainstream crypto industry, providing its custom-built ATMs at dozens of locations at a time when there was limited access to exchanging crypto for cash.

But its partnerships with established financial service providers propelled it to another level. Neil Bergquist thought, “Why deploy crypto-specific ATMs when you can just crypto-enable all the existing ATMs?” In early 2019, Coinme announced a partnership with Coinstar, a company known primarily for converting loose change into banknotes or gift cards. Rather than build its own ATMs, Coinme would install an API that enabled users to exchange physical cash for bitcoin on machines made by Coinstar, already a well-established brand with nearly 20,000 kiosks across the United States.

Coinstar’s extensive kiosk network was transformed into a network of cryptocurrency transaction hubs without the need to construct new crypto-specific infrastructure from scratch. Integrating Coinme’s bitcoin purchasing capabilities into existing kiosks dramatically expanded the accessibility of bitcoin to the general public, enabling customers to purchase crypto with cash in a few clicks while inside a familiar retail environment.

By mid-2019, the move had enabled Coinme to jump from 70 to 2,100 locations across the U.S., expanding from the Western states to key markets such as Boston, Chicago, the District of Columbia, and Philadelphia. Over 7,000 Coinme-enabled Coinstar kiosks were operating in 48 states by 2022.

This strategy of partnering with established financial services companies like Coinstar has been essential to the company’s growth. In 2021, it announced a partnership with peer-to-peer payment company MoneyGram that enabled users to exchange cash for bitcoin and vice versa at roughly 20,000 MoneyGram locations.

In January 2022, MoneyGram acquired a 4% stake in Coinme as part of an ongoing commitment to integrate cryptocurrency services with traditionally accessible financial systems​.

What’s Next? Growth and Partnerships

Coinme continues to expand its offerings and develop new partnerships to increase access to bitcoin ATMs.

In March of this year, the company announced that crypto purchases made at over 9,700 Coinstar kiosks across 49 states will now be automatically and instantly loaded into users’ digital wallets, without the need for a redemption code. At the same time, the company raised its daily purchase limit to $9,500 and monthly limit to $60,000 for cash transactions. According to Neil Bergquist, these changes aim to provide customers with the easiest bitcoin purchasing experience available as the industry continues to push toward mainstream adoption.

“We want to make the cash-to-crypto buying experience as simple as possible. Automatically loading crypto into the Coinme wallet after purchasing it at a Coinstar kiosk makes it more streamlined than ever for both the first-time and experienced crypto user,” Bergquist said in a statement. “Now, the purchase is linked directly to the customer’s mobile phone number and loaded into their Coinme wallet all before they leave the grocery store.”

Shortly following that announcement, in early April, the company announced a partnership with global digital payments platform CiNKO, which will extend the global reach of its cash-to-crypto network. Coinme users can now send funds to CiNKO wallets and then cash out at participating MoneyGram locations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Coinme is proud to be aligned with CiNKO in a vision that both companies share. Our mission is to provide more individuals around the world with access to a better financial future via cryptocurrency. This partnership serves that mission and the millions of people who benefit from trusted access to cryptocurrencies,” said Bergquist in a statement.

Coinme now enables users to cash in and out of cryptocurrency at over 40,000 physical locations worldwide, making it the largest cash exchange in the world. It’s hard to imagine that a company that started with three hard-fought bitcoin ATMs just 10 years ago could have scaled this quickly, but of course almost no one foresaw the rapid scale of the crypto industry in 2014. Coinme was recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in North America according to The Financial Times. Bergquist had enough foresight to get in early, and he’s planning on keeping the company as a foundational exchange for years to come.

Originally posted on https://blinklist.com/