[numair]

And you think the 200 Chivo ATMs aren’t going to be criminal hotspots? Not saying that to be critical — solving that problem seems to be key for more countries than just El Salvador, and for electronic remittance beyond Bitcoin.

[dcolkitt]

No, because unlike Western Union people don’t have to take out their whole balance at once. In fact they don’t have to take out anything, because they can use Chivo BTC to pay anywhere.

[billytetrud]

Criminal hotspots? How so? Are ATMs usually criminal hotspots? If you're thinking that bitcoin ATMs can help people launder money, you're mistaken.

[putnambr]

What they're saying is that if staffed remittance locations have been locations for criminals to hang out and rob people, bitcoin ATMs surely will have the same issue.

[billytetrud]

Ah. Well as others have pointed out, its likely that people will need to go to atms less often (since they can send directly with their app) and that amounts handled at atms would be substantially lower (because when using the lightning network, there aren't incentives to send one large payment vs a number of small payments). So if that's the worry, bitcoin would probably improve that situation as well.

[manigandham]

True, but that's only if you need to convert to hard cash/USD. If you can transact digitally then ATMs have less usage and associated risk.