Google’s Campus London is a seven-floor building based in the UK dedicated to encouraging “innovation through collaboration, mentorship, and networking”. The building was designed for entrepreneurs and startups “on their quest to change the world”.
According to Google,
“Google began life as a startup in a garage in California. Campus allows us to help entrepreneurs grow and find success in a better garage. Our success will be measured by the success of the startups who use Campus.
Campus allows UK technology startups to meet at a central point and create a real sense of community. The aim of Campus is to be a centre for mentoring and inspirational speaker series with a programme of events that help all entrepreneurs to realise their ambitions.”
Campus features speedy wifi, a café, frequent networking and speaking events, coworking space, and now, a brand new bitcoin ATM. The Campus café has already accepted bitcoin through the Wyre app, and now, with London’s 5th bitcoin ATM, Google is continuing its interest in Bitcoin.
The bitcoin ATM (or “BTM” as it’s called on Campus) arrived just recently, coinciding with a special event where Campus members, as well as representatives from Barclays, Lloyds, UK Payments Council, and others, discussed several topics, including “the crossover between traditional and virtual currencies and the ways in which users assert and protect their identities when accessing their Bitcoin wallets,” and the future of Bitcoin in general. The BTM was brought to Campus by BitBuddy and Callsign, two startups based in the same building. With the new BTM, the approximately 35,000 entrepreneurs on Campus can easily experiment with bitcoins and consider integrating bitcoins with their startups. Campus London also has around 100,000 visitors each year, visitors who will now have access to one of London’s few bitcoin ATMs.
“We are excited to see how consumers will interact with the first Callsign-enabled BTM in the UK… Being exposed to new and growing technologies is critical for entrepreneurs and startup development so I cannot think of a better place for this BTM to be launched.”
-Zia Hayat, CEO and founder of Callsign
“Campus members love to experiment and relish access to the most cutting-edge tech commerce opportunities out there…Having one of the UK’s first BTMs at Campus London is only going to encourage more innovation, experimentation and, as a result, transformative British companies.”
-Sarah Drinkwater, head of Campus London
While Campus London isn’t the same as Google’s London headquarters, Campus is very much a Google-supported building. So Campus London’s “Bitcoins are here to stay!” event certainly indicates Google’s interest in bitcoin. Google also started using Coinbase’s API earlier this year to show a bitcoin ticker on Google’s search results page. Perhaps the search giant might be slowly developing an interest for cryptocurrency?
What do you think about Campus London’s BTM? Comment below!
Images from Shutterstock and Google Campus London.