Russia's Biggest Bank is Buying 5000 Blockchain ATMs That Can Mine Crypto

Published on by Cointele | Published on

Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has called for tenders to provide 4,917 ATMs with a built-in graphic card capable of supporting "Blockchain operations".

Cointelegraph spoke with two experts who said the most obvious use case for a blockchain optimized graphics card is mining cryptocurrency.

World's first blockchain ATMs?The maximum bid for the tender is $108,501,718.

"Graphic card with support for Nvidia Cuda for OS for image recognition and possible blockchain operability".

Bitcoin ATMs are not a novelty regular bank ATMs with blockchain technology are unusual.

The big question is: why does a bank ATM need a graphic card that is capable of handling some blockchain operations? There are a couple of possibilities ....A cryptorouble or error?The most obvious use case is cryptocurrency mining.

A much less interesting possible explanation is that there is simply an error in the tender document's description and the graphics card is only needed for image recognition, which would make sense considering that these ATMs will also have biometric authentication.

Recording ATM transactions on blockchainMatvey Voytov is the head of marketing of Waves Enterprise blockchain platform which has explored several initiatives with Russian corporations and Russian government.

At the same time, he pointed to Russia's Tax Authority recently introducing a blockchain platform for the expedited loan issuance for small businesses.

Speculation cornerIf Russia is planning the issuance of a CBDC, it's likely that Sberbank would be the first bank to learn about it.

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