One decade after Vietnam saw its first Bitcoin ATM launch in Ho Chi Minh City, the increasingly popular central Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang has now officially joined the map.
Earlier this month, a small group of BitcoinVN team members gathered alongside selected clients, long-time supporters and local Bitcoiners at Westwood Da Nang to celebrate the launch of the first Bitcoin ATM in Da Nang – marking another milestone in the gradual expansion and demonstration of capabilities of what is, to our best knowledge, Vietnam’s only homegrown Bitcoin-centric hardware and manufacturing startup.
The new Da Nang location is operated in cooperation with Westwood Da Nang – a venue focused on innovative high-end cuisine which, in short order, has established itself as a gathering point for local resident Bitcoiners as well as visiting Bitcoiners passing through town from abroad.
Quality in both monetary and culinary choices – Westwood Da Nang knows how to deliver on both fronts.
From imported Western technology to “made-in-Vietnam”
When BitcoinVN brought the first Bitcoin ATM to Vietnam in the summer of 2016, the broader industry itself was still far less professionalized and significantly more experimental in nature.
Similar to Vietnam itself, our firm was also at a much earlier stage of development at the time. The first machine deployment therefore still required the company to rely on Western hardware financed by better-capitalized business partners from more developed markets.
This was a familiar path for many emerging Asian economies in recent decades: first relying on foreign capital, imported equipment and outside technical support, before gradually building up local expertise, technical capacity and eventually manufacturing capabilities at home.
The machine was placed directly at the centre of the District 1 roundabout opposite the city’s Starbucks flagship store, at “Le Crespo” – the predecessor venue to what would later become Italiani’s, today one of Saigon’s most reputable and longest-running pizzeria operators, with more than a decade of uninterrupted operations under its belt – a notable achievement in Ho Chi Minh City’s fast-moving and highly competitive F&B environment.
What can I do with a Bitcoin ATM?
For many years, Bitcoin ATM access in Vietnam remained largely concentrated in and around greater Ho Chi Minh City (including Vung Tau), despite growing interest from both visitors and international residents across the country.
Located near Da Nang’s An Thuong area – one of the city’s most active hospitality districts, known for its growing international community, beachside lifestyle and digital nomad presence – the new machine gives international visitors, remote lifestyle enjoyers and Bitcoiners passing through central Vietnam direct access to buying and selling Bitcoin for cash without dependence on traditional banking infrastructure.
In years prior – due to limitations of the original software originating from a different era and the deep care that needs to go into untangling, rewriting and adjusting any Digital Asset-related software infrastructure (as vibe-coding such parts will quickly turn into an additional budgetary boost for nation-state-level threat actors…) – the machines used to only support Bitcoin on-chain buy and sell transactions.
Cool in 2014, but in 2026 that is of course a pretty subpar user experience – as people rarely want to wait maybe half an hour or longer until a block arrives to finally get their cash out of the machine… 🙂
Since last month we have therefore – market realities being what they are – given in and started to also provide convenient access to cash out stablecoins, starting with the main competitors: USDT by Tether and USDC by Circle.
Bitcoin Lightning support is scheduled to come onto the machines by Q3/2026 at the latest – and as Lightning itself is a rather “finicky” part of technology, we hope to be able to deliver on this timeline.
What we can promise you is that it is high on our priority list – but once again, quickly “vibe-coding” cryptocurrency-related infrastructure can also be a quick path to disaster, so bear with us until we have sufficiently battle-tested the implementation. 🙂
Regulation in Vietnam
Vietnam has since last year begun implementing its Digital Asset framework, which will likely bring about gradual changes to the domestic Digital Asset infrastructure landscape.
Our team is actively monitoring the situation and remains ready to adjust service offerings as required.
With that said, we believe that Vietnam’s strong endorsement of new technologies – combined with the country’s rapidly accelerating capabilities in high-tech manufacturing and delivering 21st century technological products at international scale – means that there is likely a place for such products within the country’s evolving regulatory landscape.
The current BTM offering is primarily geared towards international visitors, remote workers and short-term travellers who may encounter difficulties navigating local payment infrastructure or who prefer not to carry larger amounts of physical cash while travelling. As such, the machine interface currently prioritizes international language accessibility.
The system also leverages years of industry collaboration and operational experience: real-time blacklisting and blocking of known bad actors, warning systems displayed directly on the machine interface, as well as interventions by experienced compliance and AML personnel whenever unusual behavioural patterns linked to potentially fraudulent activity are detected.
Partner with BitcoinVN BTM
The challenges for wider network deployment are manifold:
New operators often believe that operating a BTM is pretty much plug & play – “plug the machine into the wall and it makes you money”.
This is – as we also had to learn during our early years – unfortunately not how it works at all.
The reality of operating physical hardware infrastructure is far more challenging. Various foreseeable and unforeseeable issues required to keep machines online, stocked and operational – from software to hardware – require a dedicated and professional operations team for any serious deployment.
The learning curve is steep and without experienced operators you will regularly face downtimes and other operational issues which make “hobby operations” largely non-feasible.
However, a good decade spent building, maintaining and operating these machines has put us into a position as probably the most experienced BTM operator team originating out of Southeast Asia.
We combine a Western engineering and operational mindset with a strong focus on stringent quality standards – our lead technologist originates from Sweden while the department benefits from North American management guidance – with the relentless Vietnamese drive for rapid execution and delivery.
While more official announcements will be forthcoming – on this page as well as via our social media channels – the successful completion of the first remote deployment of our Gustav I model marks a major milestone and provides us with the ability to gradually expand our offerings internationally.
While we are currently not looking to aggressively expand domestically within Vietnam amid the still-evolving regulatory environment, we remain open to strategically relevant operator partnerships.
If you are interested in what we are building and would be interested in bringing one or several of our machines to your country – we can have a talk.
Various opportunities to partner with our team on the commercial side are also scheduled to become available in the months ahead. If you would like to remain informed, feel free to reach out to us via the contact channels at BitcoinVN.io so we can keep you updated.
To remain up to date, you can also follow us via X/Twitter or Telegram.
