If you have been following closely – or have visited one of our machines recently – you may have noticed that, besides good ol’ Bitcoin, selected machines can now also be used with your stablecoin of choice, including USDT by Tether and USDC by Circle (currently on the Ethereum network only, with additional supported chains to follow in due course).
Our team has been working heavily behind the scenes over recent weeks and months, and this is only the first visible step in a broader set of improvements you should expect from us.
For now, this upgrade should be understood as an unofficial soft launch: a way to test the new software capabilities enabled by the native integration of our BTM network with BitcoinVN’s fast and powerful in-house BV swap engine.
Bitcoin purists may not be thrilled to see us widening the machines from “Bitcoin only” toward a broader range of supported assets. But this move simply acknowledges market realities and the state of digital asset infrastructure in 2026.
In 2026, stablecoins already have a global user base likely numbering in the hundreds of millions and are plausibly on track to surpass a billion users before the end of the decade, while the “die-hard” Bitcoin user base (people who actually use Bitcoin – not “adding it to their portfolio”), remains much smaller.
While generally consisting of high-quality individuals with a more sophisticated understanding of the technology, this active Bitcoin user base counts likely, at best, in the seven-digit range globally.
Our team will keep a strong focus on building and developing Bitcoin infrastructure – but the realities of the market are also clear, and we must make decisions which make economic sense to keep our operations sustainable.
The infrastructure is there. The monthly costs are there. Restricting the use of the machines from a vast audience which knows how to use stablecoins, but does not know how to use Bitcoin, for ideological reasons is of course not a winning strategy – especially in an aggressively pragmatic, competitive and fast-paced environment such as Asia.
We absolutely expect stablecoins to make up 90%+ of BTM usage in the very near future. It is what “everybody uses”, while Bitcoin – for better or worse – has not, and might not ever, achieve this level of distribution.
Everybody needs to pay for things and move value across space. Not everybody has significant savings to protect – or needs (or cares!) to bother with moving value across time.
Last but not least, it must also be acknowledged that in 2026, the user experience of using Bitcoin on-chain for a quick cash-in / cash-out at the machines is rather dismal.
Time is in short supply, and nobody wants to – rightfully so – wait around until the next Bitcoin block confirmation appears before the machine finally releases cash to the client.
Stablecoins with short confirmation times mitigate that issue in an effective manner.
Yes, we are fully aware of the issues around censorship, counterparty risk, and the lack of privacy on most public blockchains today. But the vast majority of users do not care about these trade-offs in practice and will continue to prioritize convenience above everything else.
And yes, we are also working hard to bring Bitcoin Lightning support to the machines in the second half of 2026, in order to bring the Bitcoin user experience up to the current state of the art.
Overall, the current line-up of Gustav I Bitcoin ATMs operated by BitcoinVN should be seen as an initial “made-in-Vietnam” prototype, developed through more hard work than we would like to admit over the past six and a half years.
In parallel, the team has been working to evolve this model into one that could also align with the future direction of Vietnam’s broader digital asset integration, and we are currently exploring pathways to transition into a more formalized and compliant operating framework under emerging regulatory structures.
Our team is fully committed to contributing to the build-out of domestic capacity – both in terms of technological and operational capabilities – and to establishing the first credible “made-in-Vietnam” alternative to the currently dominant Western digital asset teller machine providers.
The current model can be seen as a prototype along this pathway, and we welcome any feedback you may have as we continue to refine and improve it over time.
More from us to follow soon.
