Probably the world’s first Bitcoin ATM opens this week in Vancouver, Canada. According to reports from CBC, Mitchell Demeter, co-founder of Vancouver Bitcoiniacs bitcoin trading company and part-owner of Robocoin, have invested in five such machines to be placed across Canada.

The automated teller machine, made by Nevada company Robocoin, is being installed at the Waves coffee shop at Howe and Smithe in Vancouver by Vancouver’s Bitcoiniacs, a Bitcoin exchange store located near Granville Market. The ATM will dispense the bitcoins in exchange for cash and cash in exchange for bitcoins.

“It’s the first Bitcoin ATM in the world,” said Bitcoiniacs co-founder Demeter. “We have four more coming in December and we’ll be spreading them out across Canada in major cities. Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa is kind of what we’ve got our sights on but nothing is finalized yet.”

The ATM machines will be bilateral, and users will be able to pass or raise cash in exchange for bitcoins. It will run on Windows 7, and is equipped with palm scan technology. The ATM will trade in Canadian dollars for online bitcoins. Users are required to do a palm scan and are permitted to exchange up to $3,000 per day. When the coins are exchanged, they are then entered in your online Bitcoin wallet. All transactions will be anonymous.

While some have doubted Bitcoin’s validity including the recently shut down episode of Silk Road, others have raised concerns that the unregulated currency is being used for nefarious means. Last month, a US judge ruled that Bitcoin, which has been around since 2009, is a real currency.

Demeter said he aims to make it easier for people to buy and sell Bitcoins and hopefully will drive the adoption of Bitcoin, and make it more accessible for people.

Bitcoiniacs is a Bitcoin broker and charges customers three per cent for exchanging bitcoins for cash and vice versa. Vancouver is home to a growing number of Bitcoin users and number of merchants are now accepting the virtual currency. A lot of people use them to spend around the city and people are using them as an investment. There are also a lot of people who prefer to use Bitcoin rather than a credit card to buy online. WordPress.com is among companies that accept bitcoins.

Germany becomes a breeding ground for the physical exchange of Bitcoin, after authorities recognized Bitcoin as “private money” currency. Bitcoin recently also got a boost when the giant search engine Baidu, China’s equivalent of Google, started accepting bitcoins.