Bitcoin ATMs in Poland allowed CNBC to send bitcoin to refugees in 3 minutes

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Refugees from Ukraine a Bitcoin ATMs

• Mass evacuations from Ukraine to Poland are underway. One of the many challenges facing Ukrainian refugees is getting access to their cash from abroad. Banks are limiting Ukrainians' options.
• Lightning Network reduces transaction costs to virtually zero, cuts out unnecessary intermediaries such as banks, and enables near-instant cash payments worldwide.
• CNBC tested an international cash transfer with a Ukrainian refugee residing in Poland, via Bitcoin ATMs Shitcoins.club in Wroclaw, Poland.

See how cash is received from Bitcoin ATM during CNBC coverage

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Test of international transfer via Bitcoin ATM - from Bitcoin to cash "in hand"

Alena Vorobiova had never been preoccupied with the subject of bitcoin, at least not before Russia's armed invasion of Ukraine in February. After the border closure and shelling of her hometown, cash shortages began at ATMs across the country and at the central bank, suspending transfers. So she decided to try Bitcoin.

While wire transfer fees when sending $100 from the US to Ukraine are about 10% or more, Lightning Network reduces transaction costs to virtually zero. Also helping are operators Bitcoin ATMs, which offer promotions on commissions, up to 0% against exchanges. One operator currently requires no commission at all on sales at its Bitcoin ATM in Ukraine, instead offering an additional +2% against exchanges when selling.

Bitcoin payment test for refugees in Poland

Vorobiova and CNBC decided to test Lightning payments - thanks to the knowledge and skills of a developer working with, blockchain, Gleb Naumenko, who is currently hiding in western Ukraine as war rages in the east.

What are the conclusions? It really works as smoothly and seamlessly as they say.

The process of downloading the crypto wallet to Vorobiova's phone, transferring the bitcoin via Lightning Network from the US to Poland and withdrawing the equivalent in Polish currency from Bitcoin ATM in Wrocław, Poland (Czekoladowa 7-9, Bielany Wrocławskie) - all took less than three minutes.

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‍Sendingbitcoin from Dallas to Miami and later to Poland.

In August 2021, while traveling by car from Houston to Dallas, Peter McCormack - founder of the popular What Bitcoin Did' podcast - taught CNBC how to use the Lightning Network to make instant payments to anyone in the world. If you're also interested, accessible step-by-step style tutorials on the subject can be found primarily at Payment-Bitcoin.co.uk, such as the First Bitcoin Payment tutorial - or how to easily pay with bitcoin.

McCormack's lesson in the car lasted less than 60 seconds and involved four steps: 

• We downloaded the Blue Wallet app and generated a one-time invoice in the form of a QR code. 
• McCormack scanned this QR code using a similar app on his phone
• He then sent 100,000 satoshi from his account (satoshi compare to bitcoin a bit like pennies to zlotys, one satoshi is 0.0000001 BTC).

The total transfer was about $50.

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Eight months later, from a hotel room in Miami on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference, CNBC decided to put that knowledge - and some of those satoshi - into practice.

During a three-person video interview with Naumenko in western Ukraine, Vorobiova in southwestern Poland and CNBC in Miami, we followed a very similar sequence of events.

After Naumenko's instructions, Vorobiova downloaded the Muun wallet app, a wallet using the Lightning Network, used for self-storage of bitcoin. 

She prepared a four-digit PIN, and generated the invoice as a QR code. CNBC then picked up this QR code using Blue Wallet's scanning mode and sent over 50,000 satoshi from McCormack. The fees were fractions of a penny. 

In fact, for the purpose of the experiment, Naumenko transferred another 50,000 satoshi, since the bitcoin ATM had a minimum withdrawal amount.

Jeff Czyz on Lightning's amazing capabilities

Bitcoin developer Jeff Czyz tells CNBC that Lightning wallets are compatible because they all have to implement the Basis of Lightning Technology or BOLT specification, which defines the Layer 2 protocol for sending payments over the Lightning network.

"Lightning's wallet application is similar to a bank in that transferring money between banks requires them to use the same language." 

said Czyz, a programmer on Jack Dorsey's team known as Spiral (formerly Square Crypto). That common language is the BOLT specification.

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"The Lightning network consists of nodes connected by payment channels, which are used to transfer payments over the network without having to trust intermediaries, without having to pass data to them."

- continued Czyz.

Alena Vorobiova withdraws zlotys from a bitcoin ATM in Poland.

The process of moving satoshi from Miami to Breslau took about a minute.

From there, Vorobiova - who, as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, traveled to the Polish city of Wroclaw with her sister and niece to help them find their way in their new country - went to one of Bitcoin ATMs Bitcoin in Wroclaw, owned by Shitcoins.club, and processed a withdrawal there. 

Ukrainian woman collected money in cash via Bitcoin ATM in Poland

Vorobiova collected the cash using a QR code that the bitcoin ATM showed. She scanned the QR code into her phone using the Muun app, transferred her bitcoins to the ATM account, and the ATM in turn dispensed the money.

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It ended up at 170 zlotys, in Polish currency, worth about 100,000 sat, or $40. The ATM company charged a fee of PLN 10, or about 5.5% of the total transaction. By comparison, the average commission worldwide is more than 7%. Accidentally, this bitomat company is a unique operator in the market, as they are the only ones in the world to organize promotions not only for a 0% commission, but also
even +3%. 

"It's a bit like making payments for goods or services using Lightning," explained Czyz.

For Vorobiova, it was a very fun experiment. She is able to go back and forth from Ukraine to Poland. She tells CNBC that she is following the advice of Ukrainian regulators to use credit cards for now.

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Bitcoin ATMs As a rescue for refugees with no cash and no options

But the process illustrates how refugees without cash and without access to their belongings can use crypto wallets and Bitcoin ATMs to access banking.

Some Ukrainians use Bitcoin ATMs and crypto wallets to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, while others have found that Lightning is a cheap and fast way to receive donations and remittances from anywhere in the world. For example, there are more than 175 Bitcoin ATMs with Bitcoin, allowing refugees who got out of attacked areas with Bitcoin to withdraw it for fiat currency. These Bitcoin ATMs can be viewed on Map Bitcoin ATMs in Poland.

"Sitting in California, I can send you any amount of money instantly to your phone at any time," said Alex Gladstein, strategy director of the Human Rights Foundation, which has been supporting activists in Ukraine since 2009 

You don't have to worry about being a refugee. It doesn't matter that you don't have a Polish passport or a bank account. None of these things matter," Gladstein continued.

If you are a refugee who intends to use Bitcoin ATMs for convenient and cheap transfers, you will be happy to know that in Poland tax is levied only on crypto income. You can learn more in the article Bitcoin ATMs a Tax.