Ripple Invests $1.5 Million In Crypto ATM Network Coinme

Cryptocurrency? oriented physical ATM network Coinme has revealed that is has successfully closed its ‘A-1 funding round’, in which it has raised a total of $1.5 million in investment from a combination of the Blockchain? Finance Fund and Ripple’s Xpring division.

Coinme (founded 2014), which describes itself as a “leader” in the field of cryptocurrency? ATMs in the United States, stated that it intended to put these funds towards significantly expanding its footprint. It also claimed that it would seek to obtain further licenses that would enable it to operate nationwide across the USA, in addition to expansion to new and “key” international markets.

Xpring is the investment, incubation and acquisition arm of Ripple. Other recent investments it has made have included: content monetization platform Coil, and gaming platform startup Forte. In a tweet, Ripple hinted that its own XRP cryptocurrency? may be on the cards for inclusion across the Coinme network (potentially including Coinstar) in the future.

From Star, To Moon?

Coinme recently partnered with international ‘coin?-cashing’ kiosk service Coinstar, which has a total of 20,000+ self service machines that can be found in a variety of locations such as grocery stores and supermarkets. This brings a significant addition to the Coinme portfolio, and helps bring cryptocurrency?-to-cash services to a huge and mainstream audience.

Unlike with its ATM service, this allows users to trade cash for cryptocurrency? and not the other way around.

To purchase bitcoin? from one of these Coinstar kiosks for example, the customer would have to pay in cash and are able to purchase up to $2500 worth of BTC at a time. After purchase, the machine would dispense a physical voucher which can be redeemed online - at which point the KYC? procedure must be completed. Coinme and Coinstar currently take a 4% fee from each transaction? on this service.

Mainstream Adoption of Cryptocurrencies

This is just the latest instance in a series of recent activities towards mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies made by the operators of top-10 (by market cap) tokens recently.

Other prominent examples include Litecoin partnering with Miami Dolphins and GLORY Kickboxing; Litecoin partnering with Ternio and Bibox on a forthcoming LTC debit card; Ripple investing in MoneyGram, which in turn has partnered with Visa; Ripple issued grants earlier this year geared at increasing XRP adoption.

It should also be noted that the news comes in light of significant community criticisms that have been leveraged against Ripple for how it has been handling the routine sale of its internally-held token? supply. Advertising to holders that it may be planning to increase opportunities for trading XRP for cash, rather than reducing them, will do nothing to allay these concerns.