One of them is planning to install 10 bitcoin ATMs in the region.
The two leaders of the bitcoin business in Croatia, Vedran Kajić and Ivan Šimurina, who have installed the first local bitcoin ATM, have gone their separate ways business-wise. Šimurina has just installed his first bitcoin ATM in Rijeka and the third one in Croatia. He partnered up with Dunja Despot, who has previously organized the bitcoin “meetups”, reports Poslovni.hr on May 29, 2016.
Meanwhile, Kajić has installed his second domestic bitcoin ATM in Split in early May, which is also the fifth one his startup Bspend had installed, including the ones in Greece, Vietnam and Thailand. The plans of both entrepreneurs are pretty ambitious. With the price of ATMs which cost about 100,000 kuna each, Kajić has until now invested about half million kuna in the bitcoin business. Šimurina is planning to invest about one million kuna in it.
“My goal is to install 10 ATMs in Croatia and in the region and this one in Rijeka is the first one in the series”, Šimurina said. He was encouraged to start his own business because of the fact that bitcoin is being actively used by 25,000 people. He was also surprised when he saw how well the ATM in Zagreb has been doing. The biggest individual bitcoin purchase amounted to 60.000 kuna, and the biggest bitcoin to kuna exchange was 19.000 kuna. In addition, three years ago Croatia became the first country in Southeast Europe where it was possible to use bitcoin to pay for goods and services.
Šimurina also opened a consultancy related to bitcoins and registered a company – bitKONZ101. “People are buying bitcoins at ATMs because this is the easiest way to get bitcoins. This is why we have installed our ATM in a boat-hostel in Rijeka”, said Šimurina. Vedran Kajić, who founded Bspend, said he was happy that the bitcoin community in Croatia was getting bigger. “I do not know what Šimurina has been doing, but I am happy that he is expanding the bitcoin community and I would not think of him as competition since he installed his ATM in Rijeka where I have none”, said his former business partner Kajić.
