Future Tech Podcast - Creating a Global Network of Cryptocurrency ATMs

Check out this podcast with our CEO and Blockchain Engineer to learn more about a global crypto ATM network and how UpToken is making that happen!

Listen to "Neil Bergquist, CEO Of Coinme And Uptoken, And JR Willet, Engineer At Coinme And Uptoken–Creating A Global Network Of Cryptocurrency Atms An" on Spreaker.

UpToken wants to bring cryptocurrency to the masses

It’s clear that we are living in the early stages of mass adoption of cryptocurrency. While there are many profound implications a crypto-connected world, one of the more poignant revolutionary aspects is the potential for cryptocurrency to level the playing field between individuals and institutions. Cryptocurrency allows true independence from corrupt financial systems and institutions, as well as the state, while providing individuals a way to store and accrue their assets without the involvement of banks, intermediaries, or middlemen.

Read the full story here. 

Geekwire: Why former NFL player Sidney Rice is participating in a cryptocurrency token sale today

Sidney Rice has been a busy investor and entrepreneur since retiring from the NFL three years ago. He created a coffee shop chain in Seattle; opened chicken wing eateries; started a t-shirt company; and made investments in several tech startups.

Now Rice is getting into cryptocurrency.

Read more on Geekwire here. 

Coinme Skips the Presale and Goes Straight to the Public Initial Coin Offering for UpToken

Coinme kicked off its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) today minus the presale that has become typical of tokenized crypto sales.  UpToken  went on sale as a new crypto asset designed to accelerate the deployment of the largest crypto ATM network in the world. Coinme reports the ICO was launched following a pre-registration initiative that saw more than $40 million in indications of interest. To boost token sales, Coinme is discounting early sales.

Read the full story here. 

Coinme expands crypto ATM network nationally

We’re excited to announce that we are now expanding our innovative and easy-to-use crypto ATM network across the US, starting this month in California, Colorado, Kansas and Texas.

Our locations have been chosen to make them as convenient and easy to find as possible, including new ones in Albuquerque, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Wichita.

We believe money should be accessible anywhere so we plan to grow our network across the world, and as the first licensed Bitcoin ATM provider in the US, we have the track record, human-first approach and international venture-backing to make this happen.

Last month, we launched UpToken to further accelerate the build out, and make the cryptocurrency economy available to the world.

Today, there are more than 3 million traditional ATMs in use worldwide, compared to just 1,500 crypto ATMs. There is also an “unbanked” population of some 2.5 billion people in areas without traditional financial infrastructures where cryptocurrency could provide financial stability.

Our long-term vision is to offer the world highly stable, global currency options and provide modern banking to world populations that have never had access to traditional banks.

When the entire world has access to crypto, everyone will have a fair chance at financial prosperity.

For a full list of current locations, click here.

WHY UPTOKEN IS “THE PERFECT TOKEN SALE”

Here at Coinme, our mission is to help the world gain access to virtual currency. The first step in achieving that mission is to deploy a global network of cryptocurrency ATMs, in addition to other online financial infrastructure, and we are well on our way to that goal with ATMs currently being deployed across the western United States.

In the process of doing so, we were discovered by J.R. Willett, an early cryptocurrency advocate and the inventor of the first token sale, a concept that has since taken the industry by storm. It was upon his suggestion that we launched UpToken to accelerate the deployment of our ATM network, and he has been intimately involved in its design and rollout.

According to Willett, UpToken is “the perfect token sale”. It’s one that will eventually benefit everyone, every cryptocurrency, and has no real limits on the good that can be done through it. It’s simply up to the collective vision of those who choose to participate.

Here’s his case:

• UpToken helps us all. Cryptocurrencies are changing the world, and a lot of people are getting left behind. Crypto ATMs can change that. Developing countries and the non-technical aren’t being reached. As ATM infrastructure improves, everyone can have access to fair money and financial services.

• UpToken doesn’t care who wins. Will Bitcoin win? Ethereum? Litecoin? Something else that hasn’t been invented yet? UpToken doesn’t care. In a gold rush, you’d rather be selling shovels than digging, and I think crypto ATMs represent the ultimate example of picks and shovels for the crypto economy.

• UpToken can help any cryptocurrency to grow. Coinme ATMs currently buy and sell Bitcoin, and Ethereum will be added shortly, but the owners of UpToken get to choose which coins are added to the ATMs after that.

• UpToken already has traction. Most token sales are just an idea. Coinme has existing, operational hardware. Coinme wrote all the software, from the ATM firmware up to the web wallet. UpToken takes an existing functional technology and scales it up!

• Coinme continually buys UpToken. 1% of Coinme ATM fees in perpetuity are devoted to buying UpToken, which will be given to ATM customers as a rewards program. This “cash back” is locked from sale or transfer until the customer has done $10,000 worth of transactions at Coinme ATMs. In the meantime, UpToken can be used to pay Coinme ATM fees at a 30% discount. See the whitepaper for details.

• UpToken is scalable. In the ICO world, an idea that is worth only one million dollars might attract a hundred million dollars, which is grossly inefficient and wasteful. The perfect token sale should scale with the funds raised. If UpToken attracted a billion dollars, we’d use it all to build out our ATM network, each of which would use UpToken. In fact, the more funds UpToken attracts, the better, thanks to economies of scale.

• UpToken has no pre-sale. Most token sales give the best prices on tokens to rich insiders. UpToken gives everyone access to the best prices available. You can see on our signup spreadsheet here - no one is given preferential treatment at UpToken.

Visit www.uptoken.org and join the revolution today!

CryptoCoins News: ICO Inventor Shares Thoughts on Industry, Explains His $1 Million Bet on UpToken

When J.R. Willett invented the initial coin offering (ICO) funding model in 2012, few people took notice. The next year, he launched the first ICO, Mastercoin (now called Omni), and raised about $500,000–just five times the amount raised by the aptly-named Useless Ethereum Token earlier this year. 

He says he “didn’t anticipate” how quickly the fundraising model would catch on:

“Everything I was doing with Mastercoin (now called Omni) was new and untried. I was really excited about creating a decentralized exchange, and I thought that price-stabilized assets would be a really big deal someday,” Willett told CCN in an email interview. “I knew our fundraising model was unique too, but what I didn’t anticipate was that of all the new cool stuff we were doing, the one thing that everybody would love was the fundraising model.”

Nevertheless, Willett says that he finds the hectic state of the cryptocurrency industry exciting. “I love watching a million ideas bloom and die,” he states. “Nothing could be more fun or more dangerous.”

Read the full article here. 

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES: ICO Creator And Coinme Team Up To Spread Bitcoin ATMs

The booming cryptocurrency industry is full of scathingly smart technologists pioneering a completely new type of economics. As for the rest of us, joining the bitcoin community can be a real pain in the ass.

Signing up for a cryptocurrency exchange is a time-consuming process. Once your account is set up, there are still public and private keys, plus long addresses to remember. Each is made up of a random jumble of numbers and letters, which is hard to memorize. Even with a user-friendly blockchain wallet app like Jaax, which lets users send cryptocurrency simply by scanning a QR code, there’s no simple way to translate cold hard cash into virtual tokens.

The fintech startup Coinme is on a mission to change all that.

Read the full article here: