The first Bitcoin ATM in the world was made available to the public on October 29th, 2013, and was operated by Robocoin.
It was founded in Vancouver, Canada in a coffee shop downtown, and in the first week of its operations, the automated teller machine (ATM) saw a total of 348 transactions conducted, which were valued at $100,000.
Numbers rise
Nine years later i.e. on October 30th, 2022, the first crypto ATM has either been replaced or removed and Robocoin is no longer operating.
However, this does not mean that crypto ATMs do not exist. As a matter of fact, their numbers have continued to increase over the years.
According to the numbers from Coin ATM Radar, the total number of crypto ATMs that are operating globally has now reached 38,804.
But, the global hub for crypto ATMs has moved since then, as almost 88% of the world’s crypto ATMs are now located in the United States.
In fact, 90% of the new ATMs that were installed in the last couple of months were in the US. The numbers in October alone show that out of the 205 newly installed ATMs in the world, 129 were located in the United States.
More details
Even though the first crypto ATM may have been installed in Canada, the total number of ATMs in the country has crept up to 566 in nine years.
But, Coin ATM Radar data shows that Canada still accounts for 6.6% of the total number of global ATMs. Meanwhile, on October 22nd, Spain took the third spot in the number of crypto ATMs.
A total number of 215 ATMs are installed in Spain, which is about 0.6% of the total. According to a report from Research and Markets in July, the value of the crypto ATM space is now $46.4 million.
This number is expected to increase tenfold by 2027 to hit $472 million, primarily because of increased installations of crypto ATMs and remittances.
Challenges
However, it should be noted that like the crypto industry on a whole, the bear market has become a challenge for crypto ATM installations as well.
In the period between January and May, there was a slowdown in the installation of new crypto ATMs, but the period from June to August had seen some recovery.
But, the number of net crypto ATMs worldwide dropped in September for the first time, as a total of 459 ATMs had been removed from the global network.
Coin ATM Radar said that bitcoin remains the most popular crypto used for transacting via ATMs and 100% of the machines support the leading crypto.
But, it appears that there are other currencies that have also received a lot of support. Another popular crypto amongst ATMs is Litecoin which is supported by 81% of the machines.
74% of the ATMs also support ether, while the fourth spot is taken up by Dogecoin, with almost 40% of the ATMs supporting the meme token.
US authorities had warned in early October that scammers were using crypto ATMs for defrauding victims.