I recently travelled to the UK to attend the DASH conference which was held from Sept 24-26. I left Hong Kong without exchanging a single GBP (UK currency). My plan was to use visa for the trip and in this day and age it shouldn't have been a problem.
However, one complication is that not all restaurants accept visa here, especially the nice kebab shops that only accept cash. I tried to withdraw cash with my Normal ATM card, only to get rejected. This is because I forgot to set the overseas ATM limit before I left, so I couldn't withdraw any cash.
Bitcoin ATM
With traditional ATMs out of the question, I decided to checkout some of the Bitcoin ATMs that I heard were in the area. I took a day trip to Brighton to try and locate them.
The first ATM was inside a burger joint. It was out of cash due to a previous user who drew out all the cash around 20 minutes before I got there. Guess there is a bit of use on these machines. I did have a nice chat with a crypto enthusiast there, so it wasn't a total loss.
The second ATM I found was in a corner shop. It only had the option of buying bitcoin though.
It should be noted that the exchange rates were quite poor on the machines. They were showing me around 2300 GBP for each bitcoin, which was about 400 GBP lower than the prices on that particular day.
TenX to the Rescue
I remembered that I brought my TenX card and I tried it at an ATM. To my surprise it actually worked and I was able to draw 40 GBP! There was meant to be 2.5 dollars of fees, but it seemed like they didn't charge me. The exchange rate was decent too!
Conclusion
Thanks to the world of crypto, I finally got my kebab
Resources:
More on the DASH conference can be found on my YouTube channel and you can find out more about my European adventures over on Steemit!