The Albuquerque City Council in New Mexico, USA, passed a regulation this week that prohibits the installation of cryptocurrency ATM machines within the city and also restricts virtual currency transactions assisted by cashiers. According to the arrangement, known operators and retailers that have installed such devices will have 45 days to remove them after receiving notification.
Complete decommissioning within 45 days.
This ban covers cryptocurrency self-service terminals within the city limits. The city council stated that residents can still hold, mine, and transfer crypto assets through online trading platforms and personal wallets; the restrictions mainly apply to offline kiosk devices and related counter-based transaction methods.
The city council member who pushed for this regulation, Stephanie Telles, stated that about 90% of cryptocurrency ATM transactions in Albuquerque are related to fraud. She mentioned that legitimate users typically do not use such devices due to the high transaction fees, while fraudsters value their immediate, anonymous, and difficult-to-reverse transfer features.
Multiple states have implemented similar bans.
Albuquerque's approach is not an isolated case. Indiana took the lead in implementing a statewide ban in March of this year, followed by Tennessee in July, while Minnesota's ban came into effect in August. Meanwhile, Delaware is advancing related legislation, New Jersey is also discussing similar measures, and lawmakers in Texas are evaluating whether to enact a ban as well.
According to Texas, the losses incurred by local residents due to kiosk fraud have reached 57 million US dollars. The restrictions at both the local and state levels are increasing simultaneously, indicating that US regulation of encrypted ATM is shifting from case-by-case enforcement to broader institutional restrictions.
Industry pressure continues to rise.
There has also been contraction at the industry level. Bitcoin Depot, once the largest operator in North America, applied for bankruptcy protection in May this year and took offline approximately 9,700 kiosk. The company's CEO, Alex Holmes, mentioned at that time that tighter trading limits and direct bans in some regions were important reasons for the pressure on the business.
Enforcement cases surrounding fraud risks are also on the rise. Last year, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia prosecuted Athena Bitcoin, alleging that 93% of the deposits over a period of 5 months from 7 local devices were related to fraudulent gains, with the median age of the victims being 71 years old. Athena expressed strong opposition to this.
According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States, in 2024, there were nearly 11,000 complaints related to fraud involving kiosk, with amounts involved exceeding 246 million US dollars. As local governments continue to tighten policies, the space for such offline cryptocurrency trading devices to operate is further shrinking.
