Bitcoiniacs fees when withdrawing BTC to Cash

4 min readAug 2, 2022

I’m always on the lookout for ways to maintain anonymity when dealing with Crypto. Anonymity becomes harder as crypto becomes more mainstream and adopted by genpop.

There’s a few of these Bitcoiniacs ATMS located around Vancouver. I recently used one and I thought I’d give this quick review.

I’ve noticed that there are multiple versions of these machines. I feel like the newer machines have an additional fee, which I didn’t see on this older type of machine used in this review.

The Review

For this review, I performed a cash withdrawal of $200 CAD, by selling the equivalent in BTC.

The number of Bitcoins that I sold was 0.00954

BTC Gas/Transaction Fee 0.00954 = $1.25 CAD. This is the network fee, and I don’t consider this amount as part of the Bitcoiniacs fee.

The Withdraw Process

Withdrawing the funds was relatively painless, but it is a two step process, with a time gap inbetween.

You need to provide a cell number for multi-factor authentication and that’s it. With an amount higher than $200 you might need to provide some ID.

After selecting $200 to withdraw, I am presented with a QR code to scan. I open Exodus wallet, select Send and scan the QR code, proceeding to send the required 0.00954 BTC to the Bitcoiniacs ATM BTC wallet.

A redemption voucher with a redemption number is then printed which you keep whilst the conversion from BTC > CAD is occurring.

Of course, you now have to wait for the transaction to be verified by the block chain so you can withdraw your $200. You’re at the mercy of the network now, but for me it took about 15 minutes. I went and got a drink whilst I waited for the SMS message stating that my CAD was ready to withdraw.

Upon return, I punch in the number found on the redemption voucher and it spits out my $200. Success.

So what did this all cost me? See below for some simple math, and scroll down to the bottom for the TLDR

Exchange Rates

On the 6th of December 2022 when I carried out this withdrawal, at 5pm the BTC to CAD exchange rates are shown below

Bitcoiniacs Exchange Rate

1 BTC = $20,964.36

Actual Exchange Rate

According to Yahoo at the time 1 BTC = $23,321.19

I notice below in the Yahoo screenshot it’s actually showing 1BTC = $ 23,182 CAD at 5pm on 6th December 2022. That might be because the first time I went to the ATM 15 minutes earlier the rate was slightly higher. At that point is when I sent the BTC and it locked in the exchange rate. 5pm is when I withdrew the money (or 4:57pm if you look at the receipt above).
Either way, it’s a ~0.5% difference which is hardly noticeable.

Bitcoiniacs ATM Fee on $200

So, what did it cost me?

I withdrew $200 CAD and was charged $222.48 CAD, which is around an 11.23% fee.

Final Thoughts

There’s some discrepancies with the information I have shown above and what I claim, I believe this is due to editing this post & opening the apps (Exodus) in different time zones, as well as the BTC to CAD transfers occurring over roughly a 15 minute period. It’s not perfect, but the 11.23% reported Bitcoiniacs fee will be very close to the actual number.

Originally published at https://lostcove.tech on August 2, 2022.