A Tale of Three Vending Machines

People who think all Bitcoin purchases must be accompanied by KYC/AML and other are 100% wrong. Bitcoin is to any purchase of “Pay as You Go” telephone top-up credits, iTunes and Amazon Gift Cards or even Lottery tickets, which is… Security Theatre no different gambling. The photo at the top of this post was taken today in a California supermarket. Three machines stand side by side near the exit. The one on the far right is a Lottery ticket dispenser. You can insert between $1 and $20 to buy tickets and when I say, “you” I mean . The machine is Scratchers® Vending Machine anybody can do it unsupervised. From the “ . Calottery” website The Lottery ticket dispenser doesn’t ask for any ID to gamble. A can go up to this machine and buy a Lottery ticket. Think about that. It is under US Federal and state law for a private entity to run a this is child ILLEGAL lottery; the selling gambling to children via easy to access and ubiquitous vending machines. government The most common minimum age for participating in state Lottery in the USA is years. Arizona and Iowa require that players are years of age before it is legal for them play. In California you must be . There is no one supervising this machine to make sure persons under the age of 18 do not access it and buy tickets. Rather odd, isn't it? 18 21 18 The box in the middle is a movie vending machine from the Redbox company. From their literature, Can children under the age of rent R-rated movies? No, they can’t. by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). 17 Redbox requires that you validate your age when renting any movies that are rated R Redbox takes credit cards as a form of payment, and they claim they require that you prove that you are 18 or older to rent an R rated movie, but in practice . If you borrow your father’s credit card and take it down to this supermarket, you can rent an “R” rated movie if you are 15 years old, because no one is checking the rentals made at this machine, and your identity is not verified during the purchase. This is another instance of a system that is wide open to abuse. this is easily circumvented On the far left is the Coinstar machine. This machine sells Bitcoin. Read this thread about what it’s like to use it... What can I say? “Wow”. Now compare and contrast this with buying $20 in Bitcoin through Azteco. Go to the store, buy an Azteco Voucher for $20. It’s issued in 3 seconds Type the voucher code into the Azteco website, paste your Bitcoin address Is the number of seconds it takes for your Bitcoin to arrive There is no fourth step. The Azteco process takes less than 2 minutes. Wait…What?! None of the three supermarket processes described above makes any sense obviously, and the questions raised by this stark juxtaposition of three services should come easily to you if you can think. How is it that buying $20 of Bitcoin with your spare change requires that you present ID, a telephone number and a picture of your face, and hours before you “take delivery”, but buying a lottery ticket requires only… handing over the money? Similarly, why are not Lottery ticket dispensers requiring all the Heath Robinson Security Theatre that Bitcoin vending machines attract? You know perfectly well that a 15 year old buying a winning lottery ticket would get her mother to cash it in for her. Why are there absolutely no controls on those machines? Furthermore, the vast majority of lottery tickets don’t win, unlike in Bitcoin, and there is no gambling involved at all. No, people who buy $20 in Bitcoin are not speculating that the price will moon, where the users of it all get the same utility you silly goose. The same applies to the video dispensing machine. Why isn’t the identity of the purchaser verified before they rent an R rated movie? Clearly, none of this makes any sense at all. The scenario described here is a modern version of “Emperor’s New Clothes”. Three machines side by side, all contradicting each other in the way that they operate and the assumptions behind how they deliver services. It is Security Theatre, nonsense, and upside down circus absurdity all at once! Thank you to Ryan Dippmann for the photograph. Follow Azteco for news and updates.