I bought Bitcoin at a Coinstar machine so you don't have to!

Hey Crypto Comrades! This is my first well thought out post so I hope the information is useful to someone. I saw that they upgraded the coin counting machine at my local grocery store (Kroger) to sell Bitcoin and I had a couple years worth of saved up loose change to redeem! here's how it went:

It was a big green Coinstar machine and it was pretty user friendly (Spanish option too) I had a little bit under $200 in coins which weighed a ton but I lugged it into the grocery store to trade for precious Bitcoin

I pushed the Bitcoin option and the machine gave me the following terms before proceeding:

-Inserted cash cannot be returned

-Up to $2500 may be purchased & redeemed in a 24 hour period

-Bitcoin must be claimed at Coinme.com

-This is not an anonymous transaction (in order to claim my BTC, I had to upload a photo ID pic and selfie to their website)

-Paper money only, no coins (Wtf false advertising!)

-Bitcoin transaction limited to 5 minutes (maybe because the prices changes so fast?)

-Transfers are permanent

-Don't be a fraud victim, don't share your code with anyone

I accepted the terms and the next screen directed me to insert cash while the 5 minute timer counted down. I put in a $20 bill and proceeded.

At time of purchase (4:41pm central US time on August 8, 2021) according to Coinstar, the exchange rate was:

$1= 0.00002118 BTC.

$47,197.61 = 1 BTC (coinbase says different but oh well)

Transaction fee was 4% ($.80)

The machine printed a voucher with the website, a redemption code, and a pin #

I went home and created an account on coinme.com which required my email, phone #, picture of ID, and a selfie. Quick and easy process, then I saw my Bitcoin there in my account (although it was now $18.08)

I sent the Bitcoin to my private wallet and after the last fee was applied, I received....drum roll.........

$14.06 in Bitcoin for my $20 investment! All fees together totaled $5.94 (29.7% of $20) to get it from Coinstar to my private wallet

Conclusion: It's a way to buy Bitcoin if you don't have a bank account but you can get much lower fees on plenty of other exchanges. I won't be using the Coinstar machine in the future but at least I got some exercise by carrying around a huge jar of coins all afternoon (which I need). Hope this information is useful and I look forward to contributing more quality content in the future!