Tuesday, April 1, 2014

First Bitcoin ATM in Malaysia

Last month, Numoni Pte Ltd has launched its first bitcoin ATM in Malaysia. The Singapore based company Bitcoin auto vending machines (AVM) available at Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur and Gurney Plaza, Penang. Numoni Pte Ltd Chief Executive Officer, Norma Sit, said her company estimates that there are around 1,000 to 2,000 bitcoin users in Malaysia.

Numoni atm

"We are aiming for 100 Bitcoin AVM machines in three years, depends on the demand," she said.

World first bitcoin ATM was installed in October 2013 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Bitcoin was first mentioned in a 2008 paper published under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. In early 2009, the first open source client (or wallet software), called Bitcoin-Qt, was released and the first bitcoins were issued. Interest in Bitcoin was growing in 2011 when some people share their story about becoming rich/buying a house using their bitcoin saving.

On 2 January 2014, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) release a press statement warning Malaysian that the digital currency is not legal tender in Malaysia:

"The Bitcoin is not recognised as legal tender in Malaysia.The Central Bank does not regulate the operations of Bitcoin.The public is therefore advised to be cautious of the risks associated with the usage of such digital currency."

They're several cases outside Malaysia that the investor lost their bitcoin investment:

1. TradeFortress
Last year, bitcoin user who calls himself TradeFortress says more than 4,100 bitcoins worth about $1.1 million have been robbed from his website. The stolen bitcoins are owned by the users of his website, who had trusted their bitcoins to him.

2. Mt. Gox
In early February 2014, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, two weeks after its Tokyo-based exchange reportedly took its entire operation offline and filed for bankruptcy in Japan after claiming to have lost around US$500mil (RM1.6bil) to hacking. In a more recent report (dating March 11, 2014) it was stated that 850,000 bitcoin, worth nearly $500 million had been stolen over several years because of flaws in its payment software.

3. Flexcoin
In early March 2014, Flexcoin, Canada based bitcoin bank, closed down after losing 896 bitcoins (worth $USD700,000) to a hacker attack enabled by flaws in its software code.

Flexcoin shut its website down and issued a statement saying,

“On March 2nd 2014 Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet…AsFlexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.”

To all my readers, bitcoin is a high risk investment but there is a potential for high profit because it is the best place for money laundering since there's no way of telling where you got the bitcoin from. Chance of hacking will be very low if you put your wallet in a PC that do not connect with internet or network.