I was at DEF CON 21 this weekend and in between drinking and drinking, caught several demonstrations of this ridiculous thing:

What you see here is a briefcase filled with electronic guts and a coin slot that somehow converts your real money into fake money, possibly using a 4G modem and a shady exchange.

What it’s supposed to do is print out a receipt containing two QR codes, the first being the important private key, the second being the public key. We were kindly asked not to photograph people’s private keys as the machine spit them out, since this would be a great way to steal people’s play money.

Once we’d spent enough money on booze and collected a handful of change that wasn’t left on a hotel nightstand, we decided to give this thing a spin just for kicks. Things went downhill almost immediately. Four quarters went in, the display read $0.25, and a penny was found in the coin return slot.

Fortunately, our Bitcoin Heroes were prepared with a sack full of quarters that they kept around “just in case” because this happens sometimes. Once our host had sacrificed seventy-five of his own cents, we received a “paper wallet” that was worth .008 bitcoins. The guy behind us in line was unironically ranting about the instability and worthlessness of the USD. After a quick photo op, we got the hell out of there.