My Journey To Finding Bitcoin Cash In Hong Kong

April 5, 2021

Sunday has been a good opportunity for me to roam around the city and to do things I wanted to do. Every since I started to love Bitcoin Cash, I have always wanted to find a way to buy the coin easily. There are options to buy BCH for me, through coins.ph wallet, exchanges, or ATMs.

For us Filipinos, the easy way is to buy BCH is using coins.ph wallet. You just have to place a buy order then pay the transactions through banks or remittances. Unfortunately, I am working here in Hong Kong so it is much difficult for me to use this process. I have tried one time but it was done through the help of my friend in the Philippines.

I made the transaction in my coins.ph wallet, then send the payment to my friend. Then my friend paid the transaction by sending the money to my coins.ph wallet through a remittance center (Palawan Remittance Center). One of the downsides here is, the transaction needs to be paid within 8 hours from the time of creating the buy order. My friend is a full-time teacher so I don't want to disturb him every time I want to send money to my coins.ph wallet for buying crypto.

Why my friend, not my family members? This friend of mine knows about cryptocurrencies and making transactions using coins.ph wallet. My family doesn't know about coins.ph wallet yet except with my sister. But I just don't want to share my investment in cryptocurrencies with them as they might think of negative things about it. They don't know much about crypto yet, and I still need to educate them about this matter when I get back home.

Another way to pay the transactions on coins.ph wallet is through bank remittances. Unfortunately, my bank which is BPI is not on the list and I only have a debit card, not a master card, so they might not accept it as well.

The next option for me to buy BCH is through exchanges like Binance. But then again, I need a MasterCard to pay for the transaction. I am planning to open a new one and I have actually inquired about it yesterday. But it will take two weeks for the activation of the card and I need to collect the requirements first.

My last option would be through ATM and so yesterday, I went out to look for Bitcoin Cash ATMs here in Hong Kong. I was lucky to find one near from my location in Central HK where I planned to open a MasterCard.

The price of BCH was going down and it's an opportunity for us to buy more BCH. And because of the upcoming SmartBCH which will open more earning opportunities for us BCH holders, we really need to save more BCH before it's too late.

My Journey To Finding Bitcoin Cash ATM in Hong Kong

With the help of the Google map, I was able to locate the place. After 9 minutes of walking, I have stumbled upon this building in a small alley in Central city.

Who would have thought that in this secluded part of the big city lies a machine for multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrencies? I even had a second thought of entering this place as most shops were closed and probably empty.

There were only a few people in the building and they are the merchants, no customers as well except me. After a few minutes of searching the exact location l, I finally found shop 19 where HK Bitcoin ATM was located.

The first thing I have searched when I entered the shop was the procedures of making the transactions, and what I have noticed as well were the CCTV cameras on every corner of the shop. It was just too small and would only fit three to five people inside. And if my memory is right, there were a total of five CCTV cameras inside this small shop.

Aside from the unsafe location, what I was worried about was inserting the bills on the ATM. What if the transaction failed and the bills will be stuck inside? That was in my thought. But when I read their terms and conditions, it states that the ATM system is accurate to record the amount of money inserted into the machine, and if there's a dispute, the company shall handle it. The contacts for their customer service were also posted on the shop.

So here's how it looks like and it displays Bitcoin on the screen. Aside from Bitcoin, the ATM is also accepting other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. These three are the only accepted crypto in the machine. I chose the option Bitcoin Cash, of course, then tap Buy Bitcoin Cash.

The next process is to scan the BCH address QR code and hold it there until the transaction is done. Then insert the bill for the payment.

I inserted HK$100 as I thought it's the minimum amount, unfortunately, the minimum first bill to insert was HK$500.

Since my cash was not enough, I have canceled the transaction. I was actually expecting that the machine will accept a digital wallet like Alipay to pay the transaction since most of my money is stored in Alipay for easy buying goods and sending money to my family in the Philippines.

I have made a video for this and uploaded it on my Youtube channel. The video is just short and doesn't really have complete details about my finding of BCH ATM in Hong Kong as well as making the transaction. You can watch it here.

After making the video, I realized that what if the ATM accepts transactions lower than HK$500 and the first bill was only HK$500 😅. Too late for me to think about it.

So that was my journey in finding Bitcoin Cash in Hong Kong. In case you want to watch the video, don't forget to subscribe, and like it. 😊

And in case you want to lnow the exact location of the BCH ATM, here's the address.