Bitcoin Forum

The Number of Bitcoin ATMs Hit 9,680 in September, a 167% Jump Year-on-Year

According to data presented by AksjeBloggen (https://aksjebloggen.com), the total number of Bitcoin ATMs hit 9,680 at the beginning of September, a 167% jump year-on-year.

In December 2017, there were 1,932 BTMs in the world, revealed Coin ATM Radar and Statista data. By the end of 2018, this figure soared to 4,009, a 107% jump in a year. The number of Bitcoin ATMs operating around the world continued growing in 2019 and hit 5,795 in December.

However, 2020 has witnessed a surge in the number of ATMs supporting digital coins, with 3,885 new BTMs operating worldwide between January and September, a 67% increase in nine months.

The Number of BTMs in The United States Soared by 127% in a Year

Analyzed by geography, the United States represents the leading crypto ATM market, with 78% of all Bitcoin ATMs globally. The Coin ATM radar data also revealed the number of BTMs operating in the United States significantly increased in the last year. In September 2019, the US citizens could use 3,332 crypto ATMs all around the country. Statistics show the number of BTMs in the United States hit 7,567 in September 2020, a 127% jump in a year.

https://i.imgur.com/5s1NoUI.png

https://i.imgur.com/hhUOOcS.png

https://aksjebloggen.com/the-number-of-bitcoin-atms-hit-9680-in-september-a-167-jump-year-on-year/

There has already been a lot of discussion on this topic, and despite the incredible growth in the number of crypto ATMs the fact is that almost 80% of all such devices are the USA. I have nothing against it, and the only logical explanation is that there is a demand for this type of service not only in the USA but also in Canada which together have about 8500 crypto ATMs.

The rest of the world has only about 1000 crypto ATMs together, which is almost an insignificant number if we take into account that there are billions of potential users who do not have access to any such device. It would be interesting to see data on the volume of trading through crypto ATMs in the USA - because although they are known as the most expensive way of trading, they are obviously profitable for owners.

Quite mind boggling to be honest. We'd think that when we talk about buying bitcoin that people would mostly default to Coinbase and the like, but a good number of people seem to actually use Bitcoin ATMs despite the enormous price premiums(I know, potentially due to privacy and all that, but still).

How many of you have used these ATMs at least once in your life? I've never even seen them.

The number of ATMs is high, but that doesn't mean everyone will use them. Like traditional ATMs, they mean more of a marketing.
Now people are moving towards less cash by transferring money based on mobile apps. The future of bitcoin is not ATMs but in-store systems that accept Bitcoin.
I wonder if those 9,000 bitcoins are all legal?

currently, Bitcoin ATMs are not spread all over the world and only exist in few countries...
so for many people, it is still very strange because it is rarely seen. maybe in the next few decades, Bitcoin ATMs will be spread all over the world so you and I can see it.

I do believe that ATM's and debit cards if working together will form nothing but Banking system. This would soon be all connected but I do think there will always be a matter of Privacy.

"But then again what I believe is we have to also put the usage of ATM's into account."

Most of the ATM's are unused and therefore they go out of business soon enough. I believe we have to find a way to not only make the laws more favorable for the individual businesses owning the ATM's but also avoid such problems.

-The ATM's are not everywhere , only in those countries where the crypto adoption is sky high and the government is quite lenient with the laws.

-US , Canada , UK , Austria are the countries with most numerous crypto ATM's , if a crypto enthusiast won this election we might see a considerable rise in the current amount.

You're really going to barely see ATMs unless you're from the bigger countries like the United States; and especially if you're not in the sort of capital city of your country. I personally haven't seen a single one in my life either because I barely go to the main cities.

From the second image it is clear that more than 90% of the Bitcoin ATMs have got accumulated in a specific location or within a country. This needs to change and there is a requirement for the wide spread of bitcoin ATM all around the globe. Nothing big has happened out of such an increase in the number of bitcoin ATM. The global market for bitcoin hasn't grown, the real growth is when the 9680 bitcoin ATMs were evenly distributed.

This figure doesn't matter much in my opinion since the ATMs are located primarily in countries like USA and the TX fees are high. The ATMs need to be properly distributed through out the world and the TX fees needs to go down.

This is possible only through proper government regulations and low cryptocurrency volatility which is a difficult task to achieve, but definitely not impossible.

As adoption rates grow, the chances of such a scenario happening goes up. I can already imagine such an awesome scenario in the future.

When it comes to infrastructural development such as this, it will continue to be on the increase because the market still remains largely untapped and the market is still very fertile which makes it easy for entrepreneurs to enter the market and expand the market as well. Eventually, it will get to a point where the percentage increase in addition would be reducing because it would have been saturated and entry would become stiffer as regulations takes ground across the world.

The number is really huge. I think it will continue to increase like that. Bitcoin is becoming more popular among people year by year. As long as the demand increases, there will always be a rise in the number of Bitcoin ATMs. They are still not very prevalent on Europe but there will be more Bitcoin ATMs there in time.

It will increase more.

As the price of bitcoin is getting stable @$10k. There will be more Bitcoin ATMs that are going to be built everywhere. That's how it works, when bitcoin's price increases, people are interested.

When it goes down, the interest becomes less.

i think the lead by US is mainly because of the characteristics of an ATM for purchasing bitcoin which doesn't look that interesting to people in other countries. US is leading in invasion of privacy and since  ATMs could provide better privacy for those who want to buy bitcoin they obviously have more demand in US than in other countries that don't invade people's privacy as much.

of course another important factor to consider is number per population not just number per country. for example US has 328.2 million and Canada has 37.59 million population according to google from 2019 stats. so the number of ATMs per 1 million in US is 21 and in Canada is 25 which means Canada is in the lead.

I bet it'll continue to grow even more. As massive adoption continues, there is no stopping these Bitcoin ATMs from growing. It's like the transition from barter to precious metals, then to fiat money and to Bitcoin, the adoption takes a long while. I've seen a few Bitcoin ATMs already in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei. They just need to be legally registered and regulated for them not to be shut down by the government.

When the ATM crypto card projects appear, in the future ATMs may support many different types of altcoins. What I am concerned about is that the withdrawal cost per transaction may be higher than regular ATMs.

This is one of the challenges with bitcoin ATM or crypto ATM, the fees are higher compared to other conversion methods like in remittance centers. If they can find a way how to reduce the fees, maybe the number of crypto ATMs will increase as well as those users that will directly use these ATMs.

Surely it will have higher transaction fees. Plus the exchange rates will surely be low. But that's how bitcoin ATM manufacturers will earn from it besides ATM is still a business so it needs to make money. And that is our enemy when using this kind of machines so I doubt that ATM will be used more compared to our traditional means of exchanging bitcoin to fiat.

Although I'm not sure how private it is to actually buy BTC on crypto ATMs in the USA - isn't there at least some kind of verification (using a mobile number) or no one cares about cameras (maybe they wear masks and hats?) Although it seems to me that this could be the biggest reason that this industry is literally booming regardless of all other markets.

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I have never had a chance to even see one, although there are 4-5 in total in my country, but none near the place where I live. It would be nice to have some on hand, especially if the fees were below 5% - but small communities are simply not cost-effective to set up such devices. A few years ago I read in an article that investing in a solid crypto ATM pays off in just a few months - of course location is a crucial factor as well as how many people even know about Bitcoin.

I don't think so, sometimes, it happens first that the demand increase and the price follows. If bitcoin will have more ATM's available spreading in many country, more people will see the opportunity that bitcoin is providing. It is like an advertisement already to see an ATM with a logo in it. This way, it can induce curiosity to people.

My only concern about bitcoin atm is that, with traditional wallets, we are already paying huge fees, what more if we use these ATMs. On the other hand, it is good to buy your own ATM machine.

These won't be that hard to fix, just as most altcoins currently in the space aren't useful to the community so would the altcoin ATM be. If a feature that give the users an option to trade their altcoins to bitcoin instantly with the ATM like how the swap feature works currently on most exchanges then there won't be a need to withdraw with alts.

Most alts aren't currency per se so shouldn't be advocated for to be used as one. Ethereum isn't a currency as I assured your concerned is as a result of the recent spike in price from using the Network. Each coin should be used specifically for the purpose they were created for and the community will progress just fine.

There’s actually a  CoinATMRadar (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=253284) account on the forum, that was active until 2017. It’s an interesting read to go over the account’s initial posting history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=253284;sa=showPosts;start=80), allowing us to see some insights both into the website’s evolution, and the Bitcoin ATM business. There’s a fair share of 2014 discussion on the topic of KYC related to their usage.

Business opportunity perception was perhaps pretty high back then – worldwide, we’re just in the scope of @CoinATMRadar’s 2014 predictions ... for end of 2016 …

I pity those Bitcoin ATMs in Africa, they are not that technologically advanced when it comes to that but their adoption and development towards cryptocurrency industry is really good.

Most of us really want to experience using Bitcoin ATMs in the future and it is not impossible for that to happen. Although we are now having some improvements towards bitcoin's adoption in many countries, this should include in the next steps that we need to support and hope for. Maybe one day, we see a BTC ATMs in our place so that it is less hassle for us.

9680 places where you can pay extraordianary fee for fiat exchange

One idea I have is to wrap cryptocurrencies and use them on low-cost, high-speed blockchains. That is the most optimal way we can do it right now. Users will have to accept the terms from the ATM card provider Crypto.
Below is an example:
https://www.mycryptopedia.com/what-is-wrapped-bitcoin-wbtc-a-detailed-guide/

This incredible crypto ATM's growth means a lot and the massive adoption might have come sooner or later.
This continuous development emphasizes that people are making way to adopt crypto and leave fiat. But I know that this will not surprise us as we are expecting this to happen in the future, and this actually what we wanted to see.

And also, I want to see these machines spreading worldwide, not only in the developing countries.

not exactly 9680 places because you wont know that some of these atm's are only located nearby after the other and most of the number of atm's are installed on 1 country only  . when it comes to the fees i guess the atm owner can set thier own fees or if not , they can leave it by default and follow recomended btc fees only which can also be lowered sometimes if ever btc dips alot   . people should check the fee first before they transact so that they wont be shock or else transact really huge amount at once  .

Still not much considering bitcoin is globally use.

There's still plenty of room to grow and with more regulation and pro bitcoin government, we might see this increase significantly in the future.
Bitcoin and fiat has been easy to use, I think some fiat ATM would also soon integrate bitcoin in their system, and could be possible if the Central bank will approve that since we can't really say that bitcoin will be independent since if we are talking about regulation, it will always become centralized.

That was a pretty great number to think. But upon looking at the chart statistics of how the Bitcoin ATMs are distributed, still we cannot state a fact that Bitcoin is widely and globally used for the record that the most number of Bitcoin ATMs are commonly located in US and as you can see on the chart provided by the OP, it is incomparable to the numbers of Bitcoin ATMs that are present on the other countries. The number of Bitcoin ATMs have been crowded in only one place to be exact. Even though that was a great number, if it just located in one place, then adaption and usage will just be put into one place and would not be distributed to other places.

Looking forward that once a new thread stating the same like this (for the record I think I have already read 2 topic threads like this) the allocation of Bitcoin ATMs will be widely distributed on other countries as well and not just dominantly on US.

Of course I am very happy to see the fact that Bitcoin ATMs continue to increase in number, although there is no guarantee that with that
the increasing number of Bitcoin ATMs in circulation makes Bitcoin increasingly used globally. Because if you look at the data of the American
state that dominates the number of Bitcoin ATMs in circulation, imagine that more than 7000 Bitcoin ATMs are in America. This is not good
in my opinion, it should spread Bitcoin ATM evenly on every continent. But seeing Bitcoin as a currency is only a decade old, so it is only
natural that something like this happens. I believe that in the future there will be a more even distribution of the number of Bitcoin ATMs.

The thing that surprised me most was that the United States alone has 78% of Bitcoin ATMs in the world and that the increase this year in the number of ATMs in the United States is 127% !!!! This is really strange because I think that the US government is the one that rejects and fights Bitcoin the most, and Trump said this in a public statement.

I'm not really sure about US fighting bitcoin though, what they are doing is curbing the illegal used of bitcoin and running against ICO's and Security tokens. If they are fighting bitcoin hard then we won't see exchanges their or the growth of ATM's. As far as ATM goes here, there are couple, but personally I haven't seen it physically and what concern me if the fees though, so with that in mind I don't think that I will regularly used it, maybe for experience and that's it.

Yes that is greate news for cryptocurrencies users they can easily buy bitcoi  from bitcoin atms and the change them to desire currencies.

I can't wait for that to happen. It seems every year passed the number of Bitcoin ATM is drastically increasing however, despite having a lot of them I haven't seen one in real life. Besides, I don't planning to use it though simply because I only see Bitcoin as an asset so I cannot afford to use it for commodities. Hypothetically, by just looking to the chart of what OP have shown the number of Bitcoin ATM was increasing and this only means the community is getting bigger.

Anything that makes a profit is good for the economy and will not be labeled as a threat if it does not threaten the national currency or, as they like to say there, national security. Given that Bitcoin is worth about $200 billion in global value, it is still fairly harmless to the United States - and as one U.S. congressman said, they consider it a small baby.

As long as it can be controlled, and as long as it creates profits and jobs the current adaptation via crypto ATMs will continue.

The 2014-2016 bear market put a stop to that, the total number of Bitcoin ATMs only exceeded 1k in early 2017:

https://coinatmradar.com/charts/growth/

Since then, excepting a slowdown in 2019, the number of ATMs grew by 100% every year, although it's still not a growth as explosive as some expected.

It depends on your country majorly lol. If you are living in a less technically less developed, chances are that you might still not get to see it for a longer time ahead. Bitcoin ATM is still developing and few countries have it.

Some countries find Bitcoin as a threat when in fact it does not give anything nor take anything from them. I don't see anything on bitcoin that they should consider as a threat, if they do then there must be something wrong with their economy confidence. Bitcoin's global value is just at least a dozen people in New York.

Crypto ATMs is spreading quickly, hope it gets to reach my country and experience using this, regulations will keep this in a box.

Even if we are seeing great numbers of present Bitcoin ATMs which is incredibly awesome to be seen, still it is undeniable that the massive numbers of those Bitcoin ATMs are purely located in US and compared to other countries that have also their Bitcoin ATMs, it is very incomparable when it comes to number that US dominates all the present Bitcoin ATMs at this time. But even if such a thing, still it is good that Bitcoin ATMs have been created for it will encourage and make people realize that Bitcoin is a real deal like fiat for having also an ATM for transactions. This make the lives of Bitcoin users more convenient as well as to those who wanted to engage and obtain Bitcoin for they can easily have a seamless and fast transactions using Bitcoin ATMs. I just do hope that soon enough, Bitcoin ATMs would reach other parts of the world so that other countries and people will also experience the same thing just like what the Bitcoin users locatee on some countries with Bitcoin ATMs can experience.

Quite interesting to see the changes that are taken, but I am always wondering there are people who are really making use of these cryptocurrency ATM's? I have not used it before, I have other means that I have been using to buy and sell my bitcoins and I am very much comfortable with these methods because all I need is just my smartphone and I can buy and sell.

Moreover I hardly see anyone saying that they are making use of cryptocurrency ATM and the majority of the people I have seen that said they used the ATM's usually end up saying that they are never going to use it again, unless they just want to catch some cruise and nothing else, since the fees they are paying to buy from the ATM's are high.

With ATMs that have high fees (usually due to high costs of compliance requirements), it's either people for whom it's a one-off thing, just trying out like you're saying, but I doubt their use could sustain these ATMs, or it could be people who don't mind the fees as they need to buy Bitcoin one way or another to e.g. buy something from a DNM. I have a hard time believing anyone normal would regularly buy or sell BTC through ATMs that have high fees.

Have once thought of joining the Bitcoin ATM business but when I calculated the expense of software license and the monthly updates fee etc is a no go area for me. Despite all the things i mentioned, the fees and the pandemic situations it wonderful to see the huge increase in the number of Bitcoin ATMs.

those fees is also the reason why theres an increase of illegal btc atm business . running a btc atm business is like running an online exchange , theres more to be done and it will be hard if you only operate it alone . why not find a business partner to help you on the maintenance cost and managing . setting btc atm on a place where btc is not yet popular can be risky because your business can fail but it can also be rewarding because you can be the first or you can be one of the few of the btc atm operators to operate too early .

Does this give Big impact in market?because the way i see it nothing comes better for the prices having these tons of Bitcoin ATM's around the globe.

would this increase the users of Bitcoin or just favoring the same people who uses bitcoin already?

anyway This is a nice action though we can't feel this in my country who has only few machines until now.

Right now, the Bitcoin ATM's impact is not noticeable, or we can say it doesn't have a big hit in our market. However, it will affect the trust of the people who will see the ATM Machines. It would increase the users of bitcoin at some point, the people who doubt to use it before might use it now because they've seen the ATM Machines. And some people who noticed it might get interested in Bitcoin.