Sberbank is purchasing 4,917 ATMs that can execute Blockchain operations. These ATMs are provided with a built-in graphic card, which is primarily designed to mine Cryptocurrency. The biggest bank in Eastern Europe as well as the biggest and oldest bank in Russia provides one of the best online services in Russia. It also holds around 44% of all personal deposits in the country, managing the business through 14,200 branches using 77,000 ATMs across the country. Sberbank was one of the pioneers in Russia to pilot Crypto trading. The bank offered to trade the six most popular Cryptocurrencies on major exchanges.
The ATMs mentioned is equipped with a graphic card, as they explain:
“Graphic card with support for Nvidia CUDA for OS for image recognition and possible Blockchain operability”.
Although we all know Bitcoin ATMs have been in the industry for a while now, the bank is using a rather new technology since bank ATM with Blockchain technology is uncommon.
So why use such an ATM?
Let’s refer back to the time the bank asked a client to provide them with the information on his Cryptocurrency involvement and his income from it. The bank also asked for the client’s wallet address, some documents to prove his ownership to the wallet, as well as some details on the Crypto he used. They also asked about the mining equipment. This means the bank’s interest in Crypto has started a while ago, around the year 2018.
So, this new project might be used to introduce a Crypto under the bank’s control. It is just a guess no official news was stated regarding the reason. The new currency in development could be another reason. CryptoRuble was ordered by Vladimir Putin. We are not expecting something like Ethereum and Bitcoin since it was issued by the government. The new ATMs may be used to provide the Russian citizens with the new Crypto under construction.
Another function we thought of was recording the transactions. One of the main functions of Blockchain in the ATMs is to record the user’s ATM transactions. This was stated by Matvey Voytov, the head of the marketing of the Waves Enterprise Blockchain platform. He believes that it’s a remote possibility to expect the bank to issue its currency. He further stated that the only function of the graphic cards he could think of is the mining although he admits that an error in the tender document is a more likely scenario.
Alexander Chepurnoy, the co-founder of Ergo Blockchain platform, was another person commenting on the issue, saying: “Besides mining, perhaps it could be used for processing of some Cryptographic algorithms, but I have no idea why an ATM would need it.” He further clarified although the card couldn’t mine Bitcoin, it could mine altcoins such as Ergo (EFYT), Grin (GRIN) or Ravencoin (RVN).
Now it’s your turn. Do you think Sberbank could issue its Cryptocurrency?
Will Russia’s government use the bank’s vast network to distribute a CryptoRuble?
Could these new ATMs be a part of the enormous mining network supporting the new Cryptocurrency?
Leave your comments and tell us what is your opinion about the whole story.
Nvidia CUDA: CUDA is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface model created by Nvidia. It allows software developers and software engineers to use a CUDA-enabled graphics processing unit for general-purpose processing – an approach termed GPGPU.