5 Bitcoin ATM Companies Switch To Running Bitcoin Classic
In the continuing struggle between advocates for Bitcoin core and the hard fork of Bitcoin Classic, some Bitcoin ATM’s have drawn a line in the sand on where they hope the future of the cryptocurrency to go in favor of Bitcoin Classic.
In a recent Reddit thread posted on behalf of the Bitcoin ATM company Bitlove, they shared that they were among 5 current Bitcoin ATM companies including Coinucopia, Herocoin, Tobitcoin, Sumbits, and Bitlove which would switch to Bitcoin Classic to support the immediate block size increase. In total, 29 Bitcoin ATM’s across North America have switched to running Bitcoin Classic.
There has been much discussion as of late with the hard fork to Bitcoin Classic as the desire for a block size increase has been demanded by some in the Bitcoin space, while others have wanted to wait for a consensus and deployment of a larger block size through the Bitcoin core developers over a longer period of time.
Advocates of Bitcoin Classic have sprouted up within the software community already, specifically and most notably with the very vocal support from Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong. Armstrong has argued, among other points, that what Bitcoin needs for its survival is mass adoption and what is crucial to that mass adoption is reliability and speed through a block size increase, which is immediately available through Bitcoin Classic.
The commitment of these 5 Bitcoin ATM companies to Bitcoin Classic holds significance due to their direct relation to people buying Bitcoin with real fiat money. With the potential discrepancies between the value and transfer-ability of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Classic, the ATM companies are possibly taking a large risk in this endeavor and placing a heavy bet on Bitcoin Classic’s adoption and success. Even will a nearly unanimous adoption of Bitcoin Classic across all Bitcoin ATM providers, it still cannot be forgotten that over 70% of the Bitcoin mining pools will not accept the hard fork of Bitcoin Classic.
With Bitcoin ATM transaction volumes ranging from $70,000 to $300,000 monthly, the potential for 29 Bitcoin ATM’s (and rising) being a mover of the adoption of Bitcoin Classic is still questionable. From an objective standpoint, what will be interesting to see is what ramifications, if any, the drive of these Bitcoin ATM companies will have on the subject of the hard fork and Bitcoin Classic as a whole. Will Bitcoin ATM’s running Bitcoin Classic need to advertise openly that they are running the hard fork version with a disclaimer? Will this affect the ATM industry’s volume in a negative or positive way? Hopefully we can have answers to these questions and more in the coming months.
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