Coinapult opens 300 Bitcoin kiosks in Colombia

Bitcoin wallet and service provider Coinapult has partnered with self-service machine operator Punto Pago to set up 300 Bitcoin self-service machines in Colombia to sell Bitcoin.

Coinapult, a Panamanian startup co-founded by Erik Vorhees in 2012, claims that buying Bitcoin in Colombia will become easier with its headquarters in Panama City.

Coinapult has partnered with Punto Pago, a kiosk operator that provides round-the-clock payment services for Colombian residents for phone and broadband bills. The partnership means people can buy Bitcoin at 300 kiosk locations across the country.

The kiosk is similar to an over-the-counter system, where users can pay in Colombian pesos. After filling in their email address, users can see the bitcoins they have received. The cryptocurrency is denominated in pesos, and a paper receipt is printed after the transaction is completed, just like a Bitcoin ATM.

It is worth noting that Coinapult has introduced the "Locks" service, which allows users to "lock" the value of Bitcoin to prevent price fluctuations. Basically, if a customer locks $10,000 worth of Bitcoin on that day, he can cash out $10,000 of Bitcoin at any time in the future regardless of the market conditions.

In March 2015, the Panamanian startup fell victim to a hot wallet attack and lost 150 bitcoins, worth about $43,000 at the time.

That same month, Coinapult announced a partnership with blockchain startup Factom.

“Coinapult provides our users with the information and benefits of fund security. This is one of our most requested customer requests,” Coinapult CEO and co-founder Ira Miller told CCN.

More and more investors are looking to buy cryptocurrencies as a way to store value, and given the high acceptance of Bitcoin in Colombia, the company will benefit greatly from this move.