News
Number of bitcoin ATMs in world tops 6K for first time
November 18, 2019
The number of bitcoin ATMs in the world has surpassed 6,000 for the first time, according to Coin ATM Radar, a site that tracks the machines.
The new milestone appears to have been reached in the last few weeks. On Nov. 4, there were only 5,896 bitcoin ATMs in the world. Today, there were 6,003.
The majority of those machines, nearly two-thirds (3,977), are in the U.S. Canada follows with 722 machines, and Austria comes in third at 190 machines.
As of this time last year, there were only 3,900 bitcoin ATMs in the world.
Compliance issues
A big question mark in the industry is whether bitcoin ATMs are complying with appropriate know-your-customer identity checks, which requires them to know the source of funds being used to purchase cryptocurrencies.
Although no public cases involving crypto kiosks have been filed to date, recently, an official at the Internal Revenue Services told Bloomberg Law that criminal investigators at the agency are "very" focused on the potential compliance issues raised by cryptocurrency kiosks and bitcoin ATMs.
"They're required to abide by the same know-your-customer, anti-money laundering regulations, and we believe some have varying levels of adherence to those regulations," IRS Criminal Investigation Chief John Fort said in the report.
Last week in Melbourne, Australia, authorities seized a bitcoin ATM in a shopping mall related to "scam activity."
An early version of this story erroneously attributed the growth of bitcoin kiosks to a software that allows traditional ATMs to dispense bitcoin. In truth, Coin ATM Radar only counts dedicated devices as bitcoin ATMs. This story has been updated to reflect this.
