A little more than a year since the deal was announced last May, Kwik Trip has had all Coinsource BTMs (bitcoin automated teller machines) removed from its stores.
“We just finished removing all the machines from our stores about two weeks ago,” David Wagner, controller of the La Crosse, Wisconsin-based convenience-store chain, told CSP on Wednesday.
The removal was prompted by a couple of things, he said. “We had intended to put them in every store. We got to about 300, and then it slowed down,” he said. Wagner said the main reason was that Coinsource didn’t have the equipment or the people to install them.
Kwik Trip is testing an option called Bank in a Box with Cash Depot in a few stores while keeping an eye on the cryptocurrency market, he said.
When the machines were in use, Wagner said location was a key factor. “Those in urban areas were the most active,” he said.
The cryptocurrency industry continues to struggle with market fluctuations, too, Wagner said, noting that the BTM provider buys cryptocurrency to have the inventory to sell from the machines but might be selling at a loss if the market drops.
Coinsource founder and CEO Sheffield Clark did not respond to a request for comment from CSP.
Based in Fort Worth, Texas, Coinsource launched its first bitcoin ATM in Las Vegas in 2015. The company’s website says Coinsource provides the fastest, easiest and most secure way to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using cash at hundreds of locations nationwide. Coinsource has hundreds of Bitcoin ATM locations across 45 states and in Washington, D.C.
- Kwik Trip is No. 11 on CSP’s 2023 Top 202 ranking of convenience store chains by store count.
Kwik Trip is one of the biggest independently held c-store chains in the country, with approximately 850 locations. It serves customers in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin—and soon South Dakota—under the Kwik Trip and Kwik Star banners.