Straight answer: you can buy and sell BTC at machines here, but you cannot spend it in a shop.
What you can actually do
Buying and selling works
Several machines around the city take cash in lei and sell you BTC, and most of them buy back. Expect ID checks above the machine's threshold and fees well above an exchange.
Spending it does not
No shop, restaurant, hotel or taxi in Craiova accepts Bitcoin at the till. Treat BTC here as something you convert to lei, not something you pay with.
What a transaction actually looks like
Ten lei in, a receipt out
Feed a note in, scan your wallet QR, take the slip. On 15 August 2026 a 10 RON note bought 0.00003295 BTC at a machine rate of 303,460 RON per BTC, with a further 0.000002 BTC taken as the network fee. The machine sets its own rate — always well off the exchange price — and the network fee is fixed, so it bites far harder on small amounts than large ones. Keep the slip: it carries the transaction details if something does not arrive.
Operator details printed on the machineReceipt from a real purchase at a Craiova machine
What the screen asks before it sells you anything
Touch to start, choose buy or sell, then two questions before any money goes in: whether the coins go to your own wallet or someone else's, and whether you are a politically exposed person. That is the anti-money-laundering script, and it is the same on every operator's machine. Above the machine's threshold it will also want ID, and some units carry a fingerprint reader for it.
First question: your own wallet, or someone else’sThen the compliance question every machine here asks
Who runs the machines
Not one operator but at least three, and the name on the machine is who you contact if it swallows cash, sits offline, or a transaction does not confirm — never the shop or the mall it stands in. Photograph the operator label before you feed it a note.
A General Bytes unit inside a shop: screen, note acceptor, contactless pad, print slot. The ticker was quoting a sell rate around 337,000 lei per BTC in late August 2026The operator label on the same machine — who to ring if it eats your noteBitomat: a whole shop unit for one machine, open around the clock, with a security firm’s sticker on the door
If you want to understand it rather than just buy it
We run a separate site for that: courses, plain explanations, scam tracing, and a solo miner that runs in the browser.
Seen and used: a BITPM Trade machine standing between the shelves of a drugstore-type shop, buy and sell, cash in lei. Only usable while the shop is open. Not yet pinned — the street goes in when it is walked again.
Bitomat, 24/7
A shop unit given over entirely to one machine, doors open around the clock. Orange Bitcoin roundels all over the glass, so you will not walk past it. Not yet pinned.
Machines get moved, switched off and replaced without notice, and one of the older mall units has already gone. Check the operator's own status page before you make a trip across town for one.
