Photo credit: Hugo Heimendinger

With a total of 38,749 ATMs worldwide, the number of crypto ATM installations in Australia has increased from 39 to 1,162 over the last two years, ranking it among the top three countries just below the US and Canada, according to the data from Coin ATM radar.

The number of crypto ATM installations in Australia has grown almost 30 times since January 2022 and now accounts for 3% of all existing ATMs worldwide. The US leads the race with 31,877 ATMs in its region, while Canada takes second place with 3,004 crypto ATM. 

Around 8488 crypto ATMs are owned by Bitcoin Depot, which is 21.9% of the total crypto ATMs. CoinFlip and Athena Bitcoin are seated in second and third place with 5234 and 3461 ATMs respectively. 

While many crypto community members see this as an achievement, there are still ATMs being confiscated by government officials. For instance, German authorities, led by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), had seized 13 Bitcoin ATMs that were operating without the required licenses. 

Crypto ATMs were also used by scammers to conduct their money laundering activities due to the use of cash and lack of face-to-face communication. According to blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs, the cash-to-crypto industry is dominated by crypto ATMs and has processed at least $160 million in illicit volumes in 2019. The report highlighted that 79% of all cash-to-crypto illicit volume had been transferred to known scam and fraud addresses. 

Although the cryptocurrency industry continues to see developments in Australia, government regulatory bodies like the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has warned its citizens about rising crypto scams in the country.

Read more: AFP warns of rising crypto scams: $180M lost in 12 months