Severskiy

I’m a comedian and improviser and I run and own my own cedar here at really, I was born in Germany but raised in Woodstock New York. My wife is also an artist she’s a dancer between her income and my income from the theater we’re able to make enough money to survive .

Berlin is a very artistic city a lot of people move here to sort of explore their creative science. I think the poor but sexy description of Berlin is more or less true here. The concern is less about paying the rent and more about how can I pursue some of my dreams and actually make a career, out of it rents are relatively low although that’s changing now.

Berlin was just named the number one increase in property values in the entire world. I moved to Berlin with my wife eight years ago, this apartment is 980 euros a month, it’s 94 square meters, has two bedrooms, a dining room the kitchen and a bathroom. Large spacious apartments in Berlin are actually quite common especially if you have an old house like this, in the morning we have breakfasts which usually consists of the toasts fried eggs probably avocado on top of that we make most of our food here at home. we’re able to cut down on a lot of costs by by cooking here and then eating leftovers, for lunch sometimes we’ll go to a small restaurant here in the neighborhood that we usually take to go and we’ll eat it either at the park or here Department will do that maybe once or twice a week.

Public transportation in Berlin is actually quite expensive and it’s quite good, it’s 24 hours you can get pretty much anywhere in about 30 minutes. I’d say there is definitely infrastructure for biking in Berlin and I bike everywhere.

I have public health insurance probably a majority of the population has public health insurance. I pay 150 euros a month for my health insurance and that is the lowest here for someone who’s earning a living wage because of the nature of the work, that I do my night life that my social life is pretty much confined to a comedy cafe Berlin which is the theatre that I know on Fridays we have improve comedy performed with a group with for over five years.

Now so yeah I do drink there and I do hang out there and I do have fun there the cost of drinking in Berlin is still quite low for like a standard German beer , it’ll be anywhere between 250 and 350. I don’t think I could have started something like this really anywhere else for 100k, just to start a business from the ground up and have it still running a two and a half years later.

I would attribute that to being here in Berlin, I do see myself staying in Berlin for quite a while having a business it’s kind of like having a baby and I can’t take that baby with me so it will be here as long as comedy cafe Berlin still exists I don’t really see myself wanting to leave Berlin

Talking about hosting one of our Bitcoin ATMs. I don’t know anything about them, okay all you need to do is provide the space we install the machine and you get a check each month for the transactions processed. We even handle the customer support Brandon Mintz is the CEO of Bitcoin Depot and atlantes, a company that distributes Bitcoin ATMs across the country.

Machines like his are the only places where you can use paper money to purchase digital currency. So show me how this works tap the screen and click buy coins so we’ll just go ahead and choose the lowest option, if you can buy $20 to $1,000 , so here now it displays how much Bitcoin you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get point zero zero one five two two four three Bitcoin. So it’s about worth about thirteen dollars.

Now what I have in here that’s all right twenty dollars, yeah it’d be worth about thirteen dollars now that’s because Bitcoin Depot took seven of the twenty dollars after markups and fees. He estimates that in total his machines taken tens of millions of dollars every year, a host store he says can expect to make a few hundred bucks a month on average and attract more customers. In the process you put physical money in but then it goes into the space where everything is ephemeral on there there is no physical money is that that seems like it puts you in a unique position right yeah.

it’s definitely interesting how we’re selling digital products but the thing is when you can actually touch this machine and know that there’s a real company behind it versus just a random website that can vanish at any time. it gives you the sense of trust and credibility that this company is legitimate.

The number of Bitcoin ATM machines worldwide has tripled since 2017. There are now more than 3000 according to coin ATM radar, a website that maps them turning cash into crypto hasn’t gone mainstream, as a result not a single person we saw using a Bitcoin Depot ATM would speak with us and several even use profanity to emphasize how little they wanted to be filmed.

That might be because they’re shy or it might be because they’re shady, in the US there’s almost no federal or state monitoring of these transactions which makes it hard to know if they’re a portal for small investors or an easy way to launder money like how many people are coming in and just sticking 20 dollars in.

I don’t have exact metrics on demographics but it’s really diverse, I mean there’s low-income people using the machines because it’s a better source of money transfer than Western Union. There are investors going to the Machine in this area this where customer support and sales go down. We’ve been here for a little over a year now companies like Bitcoin Depot self report suspicious activity to the Financial Crimes enforcement Network.

A bureau within the US Treasury Department created to quote determine emerging trends and methods and money laundering and other financial crimes, but there’s no independent oversight. Bitcoin Depot has 135 machines and 15 states and more than a third of them are in Atlanta including minces.

First machine in a vape store across the street from Georgia Tech number one pillow and I’m sat and watched people who pump 10 grand into that machine. So at a time in two different transactions because they can only do five grand it for per transaction but twice a day and who what kind of people are doing that.

It’s all different kinds of people are I mean it’s it’s a lot of like urban people and I’d say a lot of strippers really it’s gonna get a lot of strippers in here. What about like drugs are people laundering drug money and I mean , I hope not but I mean probably in a statement to vice news.

Bitcoin Depot said quote it’s not a hundred percent avoidable for any company. Bitcoin Depot has outstanding compliance policies and strives to go above and beyond. All know your customer and monitoring requirements at its ATMs is there like a particular time when you have real heavy traffic. I have people waiting at the door from you some days and then I have people banging on the door at 8:15 and after I’ve already closed trying to get in here to use it so it’s it’s all day long.