Tuesday 29th October, 2013

The world's first Bitcoin ATM machine is due to go live at a coffee house in Canada today. The three business partners who own the shop have bought the machine for more than $90,000, in another sign that the digital currency is set to become more mainstream.

With banking regulations a little more relaxed in Canada, the grey area surrounding trading bitcoins for cash, is likely to be less of an issue, and may be the reason for the location choice. The new ATM machine built by a Nevada company, Robocoin scans your palm and then will sell your bitcoins for cash — or vice versa.

The machine will be able to handle up to 3,000 Canadian dollars of transactions per day, and an effort to combat attempts at money laundering, the palm scanning function will also be used to track the number of transactions made by an individual.