What's it like to sell bitcoin at a Bitcoin ATM?

Recently, I did a series of stories that reviewed Bitcoin ATMs, specifically what the experience of buying bitcoin at these devices was like. However, I had not attempted to sell bitcoin at these machines, so I decided to try that out and review how the experience went.

The first major snag I ran into was figuring out which Bitcoin ATMs allow you to sell bitcoin. I found out rather quickly that many Bitcoin ATMs do not support this feature, or at least not many in my area. So, I went to coinatmradar.com to look up where I could sell bitcoin in my area. Eventually, I found a company, Coin Cloud, which has multiple ATMs deployed in Thortons gas stations that provided this feature.

However, when I traveled to the closest Coin Cloud ATM, I hit another snag. Everything was going well at first. I entered my phone number to receive a verification code, which I then entered into the ATM. From there, I clicked the option to sell bitcoin, but the option to sell it directly at the ATM was greyed out. Instead, it directed me to go online to sell bitcoin, and then pick up the cash later at the ATM. The ATM did offer to send me a text message with the link to the website, which I did.

However, once I got the link, I found it was not the direct link to sell, but rather the company's main page. So I had to do some navigation to find the sell option, but I found out on the website that the ATM I was at did not currently support cash withdrawals. Instead, I would have to travel to a different Coin Cloud location to complete the task.

Luckily, the actual process to sell bitcoin online was fairly easy. I simply had to enter some basic information such as my phone number and the amount of bitcoin I wanted to sell (which was offered in $20 increments), then enter my bitcoin wallet information. I was then directed to my bitcoin wallet to complete the transaction. Once the transaction was complete, the page I was on informed me that it would send me a text message when the cash was ready.

After around 15 minutes, I received the message that my cash was ready so I traveled to the Bitcoin ATM, where I entered my phone number and verification code, then clicked the option to pickup cash, which the ATM dispensed.

Overall the experience wasn't seamless. It took several extra steps for which I was not prepared. That being said, once I figured out how to do it, the process was fairly easy. My biggest complaint was that I was not able to perform the task directly at the ATM, but rather had to go online. This makes sense to a certain degree as it takes time to complete bitcoin transactions due to the slow nature of its blockchain, but the inability to complete everything at one device was frustrating. In addition, the fact the initial ATM I went to was unable to dispense cash, but gave no indication of this except online, was also frustrating.

If I could give any recommendation here, it's to emphasize the importance of communication. If an ATM cannot dispense cash, that should be clearly communicated on the ATM. The customer shouldn't have to go to another website to get this information.