ABOUT
About This Site
This site does one thing: work out what the machine on the corner actually costs, and stop the people who are being directed towards one. Here is who writes it, where it stands, and an honest note about the byline.
What this site does
CURBTOLL covers bitcoin ATMs — the machines in shops, servos and shopping centres that turn cash into cryptocurrency.
It exists because the writing about them splits into two unhelpful halves: operator material that talks about convenience, and news coverage that reports the losses. Neither answers the thing a person standing at one actually wants to know — what is this transaction going to take off me?
So there are two jobs here:
- Separate the costs. The posted fee is one layer; the exchange rate carries another that is never itemised. We show you a thirty-second check that gives you the combined figure.
- Interrupt the scams. Impersonation scams — the tax office, the police, a utility, a grandchild in trouble — very often end at one of these machines. We set out the script and built tools you can use before paying.
Where we stand
Plainly: we don't think most people should use these machines.
Using public fee data checked in September 2026, total cost commonly runs above 15% to 20%, against under 1% at an exchange doing the same job. For anyone with a bank account and no deadline, that premium buys nothing they need.
We don't pretend they're worthless either. There is one thing they do that nothing else does — turn physical cash into on-chain bitcoin without a bank account — and for people the banking system doesn't serve, that premium is buying something real. We say so in the closing piece.
Explain it properly, do the arithmetic honestly, and be willing to say don't. Those are the three rules.
Why Australia
Australia is a useful vantage point. AUSTRAC said the network had reached about 2,000 machines when it reported on the sector in late 2025, and operators work under sector-wide conditions: an AU$5,000 cash cap per transaction, mandatory scam warnings, stronger identity checks and closer monitoring.
Those rules came from findings worth knowing. In a sample of the 90 most prolific users, AUSTRAC and law-enforcement partners estimated that 85% of transactions were proceeds of scams or money-mule activity; separate taskforce data found that people aged 50 to 70 accounted for close to 72% of transaction value. That is not a footnote about a fringe problem.
Much of what we write applies anywhere. The specifics — caps, thresholds, enforcement — are Australian and are dated where they appear.
An honest note on the byline
"Yeh Cheng-yu" is a pen name. There is no person by that name here.
Work is compiled and checked by more than one person, and we would rather not build authority around an invented individual. Which also means we don't do the following:
- No invented credentials. You will not find "ten years in the industry" or "former head of risk at an exchange" anywhere on this site.
- No invented test data. No "measured at 14:23, filled at 68,150". Worked examples are labelled as assumptions.
- No claiming evidence we don't have. If we say there is a screenshot, there is one.
- No naming operators as wrongdoers. The tampering article describes patterns, because we cannot verify claims about specific companies.
Where the content comes from
Public sources, checked against each other. Anything that moves — fees, limits, verification requirements — is written as a range with the month it was checked, and deferred to the screen in front of you and the operator's own statements.
Protocol-level facts (a block roughly every ten minutes, transfers being irreversible) are stated directly, since they don't vary by time or place.
Prices are always fetched from a public endpoint, with manual entry when that fails. There is no static number anywhere on this site pretending to be a live price.
What we can't do
- We don't know what the machine in front of you charges. Only its screen does.
- We don't recover funds and don't know anyone who does. Treat any such offer, especially one wanting payment first, with deep suspicion.
- We don't give financial, legal or tax advice. Those need someone qualified where you live.
- This will date. The further from the check dates shown, the more scepticism the figures deserve.
How it pays for itself
Some pages may contain referral links. They are labelled beside the link; the full policy is in the disclosure.
How we keep that from shaping the editorial judgement is set out there too. The short version: one article in each language carries one coded exchange sign-up link; no other page carries that kind of outbound conversion link.
Getting in touch
Corrections, additions, or your own experience at a machine: [email protected]. The contact page covers what we can and can't help with, and anything we've changed is logged in corrections.