Bitcoin Daily: Overstock’s tZERO Starts Trading; Coinbase Partners With TurboTax

Business for bitcoin ATM companies seems to be booming, with Coin ATM Radar estimating that there are now 4,213 cryptocurrency ATM machines around the globe, most only offering bitcoin.

Matias Goldenhörn, director of Latin America operations at the ATM operator Athena Bitcoin, told CoinDesk that the ATMs are “becoming a real alternative to banks.”

“The machines have proven resilient to the price fluctuations,” he said.

And Jorge Farias, CEO of the Panama-based startup Cryptobuyer, is planning to open Venezuela’s first bitcoin ATM in Caracas next month. He told CoinDesk that demand for bitcoin ATMs can be partly attributed to educational initiatives in Latin America, which will give away small amounts of crypto to prospective users in emerging markets.

In other news, TurboTax has created a solution that allows users to import cryptocurrency transactions from Coinbase to TurboTax.

While users had to manually enter each taxable transaction in the past, which could take hours, they can now upload up to 100 Coinbase transactions at once to TurboTax Premier to easily help file cryptocurrency transactions.

tZERO announced that secondary trading of its security tokens is now live.

“A new efficient and transparent path for capital formation via blockchain is now a reality, but those who have followed our journey know that today’s announcement is just one more step down a path,” Patrick M. Byrne, tZERO executive chairman and the CEO and founder of parent company Overstock.com, said in a press release. “tZERO is working toward a world where security tokens revolutionize traditional capital markets, and companies achieve trust through cryptographically-protected algorithms rather than through rent-seeking middlemen.”

And JP Morgan is warning investors that they might want to stay away from bitcoin.

“We have long been skeptical of cryptocurrencies’ value in most environments other than a dystopian one characterized by a loss of faith in all major reserve assets,” JP Morgan managing director and analyst Jan Loeys wrote in a note to clients this week, according to CNBC.

“Even in extreme scenarios such as a recession or financial crises, there are more liquid and less complicated instruments for transacting, investing and hedging, in part due to the scale afforded by fiat currencies’ legal tender status,” he added.