Hi I'm quite excited about the Bitcoin ATM idea, the notion of being able to input £20 notes into a bitcoin ATM in London, then fly to Tokyo and put bitcoin into a machine that gives me Yen is very exciting. Imagine a machine in or near all the major airports in the world, that would make a great exchange network!

Similarly it is getting quite difficult to buy or sell btc on the online exchanges due to the interface with the banking system, this would be an excellent way to get round the banks and deal directly with btc<>cash money. Imagine going down to the ATM and withdrawing some of your mining profits for straight cash? Or getting some online cash completely anonymously for straight cash? Doesn't it make sense to have an automated interface between the digital cash which is bitcoin and the meatspace cash which is... cash?

In the past the Bitcoin ATM was not taken seriously, because we didn't have this trouble with interfacing banks with the exchanges, and a credit card was seen as a better option which again has proved difficult because of the banks, now we have one Bitcoin ATM on the verge of being introduced, but I'm not confident it will succeed because if it's tied into the banking network, I get the feeling they will pull the rug from under it again or regulate it into an evolutionary dead end. Now I may be wrong about this and good luck to the developers, I certainly don't *want* to see it fail and someone waste a lot of time and effort, I've just got a feeling it'll get stamped on somehow. But what's wrong with some good old market competition anyway?

As a way to encourage this competition wouldn't it be good to work out an open source implementation? i.e something that deals only with cash and bitcoins and doesn't interface with any banks?  And if there's a clear documented building model open to anyone who could build one, and up to each individual builder/operator to ensure they are complying with any local money changing laws, and conversely up to the authorities to stamp out lots of little fires ensure lots of different people are complying with local money changing laws, then wouldn't that be a better way of getting this distributed? The rewards for working on this and building it would be your exchange fees, which you could charge at a higher percentage if you wanted to be greedy, until somebody else puts an exchange into the Moroccan Cafe across the street and drives your fees down to a more reasonable level.

I can't see it being *too* difficult to make one if it was broken down into manageable parts and areas of expertise, take a machine that counts monetary notes, make a USB to note-counter interface, add an android smartphone, write the software, put it in a steel box in a newsagent's or Cafe, with some concrete blocks in the base, make sure the proprietor removes any money when they empty their other tills etc....