Bitcoin ATM Burgled in Memphis

The Bitcoin ATM provider, BitKing LLC started its operations last November with just one machine based in downtown Memphis but now they have suffered their first burglary in one of their machines located at Railgarten on Central Avenue in Memphis. Their story gained some traction on the popular social network, Reddit and so CCN reached out to Sean Pezeshk for more information in regards to the stolen ATM.

Pezeshk is the firms primary operator who runs BitKing along with Josh Roberts. He says that in the last few weeks, the ATM was hijacked. The ATM was the only target of the burglary but even though the thief could have stolen some luxury items such as liquors, they decided to hit the machine. The thief/thieves stole the ATM shortly after the last employee left and according to BitKing, they were watching the place with an eagle eye.

The machine was found the next day at a dog park nearby. The local authorities are looking into the robbery but there isn’t much to go on. You might think that there would be fingerprints on the device which would be inconclusive at trial but they didn’t find anything from it anyway.

In addition, there wasn’t any camera pointing to the area where the ATM was located. The premises glass door was smashed in pursuit of the BATM.

Back in Business

What is interesting about this whole situation is that earlier in the day of the robbery, someone had conducted five separate $100 transactions. Pezeshk says that this is interesting because BitKing charges both have a flat fee and a percentage on transactions. With this in mind, it would have made a lot more sense to do just one $500 transactions.

Luckily enough, the company withdrew the cash before the premises closed.

The one ATM will be back in operation sometime in the next few weeks, Pezeshk says he doesn’t see any issues with owners of the building in starting the operations up again despite the robbery.

“The device offers non-KYC transactions up to $500 in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Monero. They have been doing between $500 and $1,000 a week consistently since opening, with occasional larger purchases. BitKing provides the cryptocurrency themselves. Obviously, they store it in a separate location. A server executes the delivery after the transaction happens at the cryptocurrency ATM.”