Has an ATM ever thrown a 404 error at your face? The above happened a couple of years ago in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Being in a desolate place, I couldn't rely solely on my credit card, so I needed cash. I didn't have a local debit card, so I don't blame the bank, the ATM, or whatever, for that 404 error. That was my first time traveling abroad, and I didn't have a clue about how money would work in the countries I would visit. I can't remember exactly but I think I probably expected that things would just work as they're supposed to.

Instead, it's a complete mess. Luckily, I had been playing with crypto for quite a while back then, and it saved me many, many times, always flawlessly and in inspiring and beautiful ways.

Latin America

On my first trip, I went through Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. I guess I had two Brazilian bank cards. Nothing fancy. They were tied to simple checking accounts that I had casually opened. In each country, they would eventually work in ATMs, I'd say in 50% of them. ATMs from the same bank would either work or not. If some of them worked, I would just stick to it, but as I usually didn't spend more than 1 month on average in the same city, I kept having to find a new working one. I also didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't just withdraw loads of cash at once.

In my first month in Buenos Aires, I found out about this one Bitcoin ATM located in a restaurant. I had to take a long urban trip by train to a nearby district in the metropolitan area. When I arrived at the address, in a shady street, I couldn't see anything besides residential buildings and a large store gate. I rang the intercom and they invited me in. Behind the gate was a quite large environment with a cozy vibe with chefs, waiters, couples having dinner, and a Bitcoin ATM + full node!

It was integrated with ShapeShift (it was actually useful back then), so I could also use Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and others. The restaurant owner happened to be a Bitcoin enthusiast and, with the help of friends, built the ATM himself out of an arcade machine. Needless to say, it just worked.

A couple of months later, I was in Chile. Although being more developed (tech-wise) and economically free than Argentina, the bank ATMs were just as shitty — I assume this must be the same worldwide. It was fairly easy to find a cryptocurrency ATM, located inside a coworking space and managed by a local Bitcoin association (Asociación Bitcoin Chile):

But in Santiago, I ended up getting cash the most using LocalBitcoins.com and connecting with a couple of guys who traded Bitcoin and had the will to meet me in person. Thankfully, credit cards are accepted everywhere in Santiago, but I still had to pay rent every month by a cash deposit. I also had to buy a not-so-cheap bicycle in cash as well — my credit card didn't have enough limit for that. At all times, it worked thanks to those guys. I had the opportunity to get to know one of them, who was a Venezuelan that fled to Chile to escape their economic disaster. Trading was his main mean of income and he also used crypto to send money to his family in his home country. He was so friendly he even accepted to exchange Bitcoin Cash at the time — Bitcoin had just started to become useless.

By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.

— Frédéric Bastiat

☝️ (stolen from Roger Ver's Twitter cover)

First world problems

One year later, I flew to Germany. First time in Europe, and first time in a "developed country". I soon realize that people are too attached to cash. My credit card was mostly useless and ATMs would charge preposterous amounts of tax for a withdrawal. While in Munich, I quickly found some crypto ATMs, but just a couple. I guess because the Euro is good (in terms of fiat currency), and because you can easily move money across the EU, crypto isn't appealing. The ATMs I found there were usually located in betting places or other unusual places like the one below in an ex-pat restaurant, which doubled as a PoS for restaurant orders.

In the betting place below, in Cologne, there was no ATM, but you could request for exchange at the cashier.

Luckily, while in Cologne, I found one North-American guy on local.bitcoin.com and met with him twice to get some cash, in exchange for Bitcoin Cash. It was my first time using the website, and I was quite happy for not having to rely on Bitcoin or localbitcoins.com. Overall, I was not impressed at all with adoption in Germany. Either they're not interested; regulations make it hard; or they just keep it secret. Hell, even in Berlin I couldn't see much besides a crypto meetup which was mostly focused on the computer science aspect of it. In that event, the bar did accept crypto, but just a handful of which the bar owner was obviously trying to promote.

Romania

A few months later, I went to Romania. I've written about it in another article, but Romanian culture is very peculiar, and for complex reasons that wouldn't fit in this article, the internet is a big part of it. They're not in the Eurozone and I believe their currency is not taken so seriously — fun fact: in 2005 it was revalued at 10,000 lei, so 10,000 became 1, likely due to inflation — so they have relevant reasons to have a lively crypto community.

In Romania, I didn't even try to use fiat ATMs, and I didn't have to schedule meetings with strangers. All cities I visited — except a couple of small villages — had accessible crypto ATMs. Some of them were even located inside mainstream malls!

In downtown Bucharest, I even found a dedicated store with a couple of crypto ATMs inside. There is a major exchange called Bitcoin Romania which also went further into establishing itself into physical locations across the country:

Now, all of this was 2 to 3 years ago. I'm sure the communities around the world have grown, and I'm excited to travel again to experience this. This was all my own experience and it's of course limited. That said, at the time, there must have been a lot of stuff going on in those places that I was not aware of.

Better than ATMs and fiat gateways, I hope we're able to do better and just use crypto, no filthy fiat money involved! I've done this move by starting to earn in crypto from my employer, and I'm trying to spread the word whenever I have the opportunity.

I'm grateful for all the crypto ATMs and local peers who allowed me to participate in the economy without having to prove myself to some authority or trying to charge a premium for it. They didn't care who I was, where I came from, or whether I was wealthy.