Bitcoin ATMs could be considered symbolic of the state of crypto’s popularity. During the digital asset boom they kept on appearing in what could reasonably be considered unusual locations. Such as Amherst County, Virginia, a place that has no hospital but does have a Bitcoin ATM. Just in case.
The number of crypto ATMs in the US peaked in August at just over 34,000 but has begun to fall, according to Coin ATM Radar, a site that tracks global locations of Bitcoin ATMs. Will these makeshift monuments to digital assets withstand the FTX bankruptcy and subsequent decline of digital assets. Bloomberg reporter Carly Wanna joins the episode to consider the future of Bitcoin ATMs.
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This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I Heard podcast, and I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for Bloomberg News. It's Thursday, December. Hi everyone, this is Stacy Marie Ishmael. Quick news about this episode. We recorded it before the arrest of Sam Bankman freed and all of the various criminal and civil allegations against him. We'll have much more on what happened there in the episodes later this week. Thanks for tuning in. I'm a senior crypto editor for Bloomberg News in today for Stacy Mary Ishmael. Bitcoin a t m s have often been a symbol of crypto popularity during the digital asset boom. They kept on appearing in places where you would think, why would there be a bitcoin a t M here, Somewhere like in Amherst County, Virginia, a place that has no hospital but sure does have a bitcoin a t M. The number of crypto a t ms in the US peaked at over just thirty four thousand in August and has since dipped slightly. According to coin a t M Radar, these a t m s were like the shrines of the then growing faith in crypto. But this faith isn't spreading nowadays, so could these monuments withstand the downturns of the current market after the f t X implosion. Here to join me to look at the current state of bitcoin a t m s is Bloomberg reporter Carle Wanna. Store owners said, maybe back in the day, a year ago, they might get one guy told, maybe be four or five people who had come to the machine, and now it's maybe one, maybe two, but maybe nobody. So before we get into what going on with bitcoiny tams, now, let's have a chat about what actually bitcoin a tams are. I have seen the bitcoin like the by bitcoin signs that are on bodegas and gas stations and stuff like that, and just always thought how odd. But I never never engage, never even noticed the physical machines before, because it seemed during the previous cycle they sort of exploded, especially in the US. They were everywhere. You know, you mentioned bodegas, they were in rural locations and you know, in the middle of nowhere. So so there are many, but it is quite telling that you say you have you haven't unnoticed. Maybe you were in the target audience. Maybe maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. So why would someone use one? Like what we're companies saying, it seems pretty easy. You know, the machine is is in your face, right, They are there like they're in gas stations, next to the soda or the candy. It's it's a sign. A lot of them flash the price of bitcoin for the day at you, so you see it, you think about it. And it also means that you can buy bitcoin with cash. So for some people who if they don't have a big account or they don't feel like going to a bank, you know, there is that benefit, and there's also a certain degree of anonymity, at least for smaller transactions. You know, different providers have different rules about how much information you need for how much money that you're transacting with, but in a lot of cases, you know, it can be less information than if you needed to go to an actual bank and deal with an account that way. Let's talk a bit about the metrics and dynamics of how they work, the economics. Let's say, who pays whom? Why would you want one in your store? And you know, how do they make money? So as far as the store owner's perspective, that one does make some sense as to why you would want one in your store. You know, if you own a bodega, the machine is another source of income and it's not highly obtrusive. It can sit someplace. It is like a physical machine. But at the same time you don't have to do that much. Oftentimes. The way that it works is, you know, you get some sort of rent that's paid to you if you're the store owner, so that's a benefit, and you don't have to handle it. There's somebody else who comes and they pick up the cash and then they leave. And I went to a few boudeguaz I talked to store owners and they just said that, you know, some man would come like every week, every few weeks, something along those lines, take out the cash. But the work at deal with whatever needed to be dealt with. Their pretty hands off. And you know, one guy even told me, yeah, I don't really pay any attention to it. Maybe it gets me a customer every now and then. A customer is a customer, So what do I really care? Um? And so for the store owners it it really does. It's not a big commitment and they do get paid to have them in their store there is often a rent type of EVA. So I guess we talked about the rally um that was. Then we've been in a crypto winter now for several months where volumes on exchanges have dropped. Prices have fallen significantly since a year ago, which leads me to why I guess we started looking at bitcoiny tms again. Can you sort of walk our listeners through why we thought it was a good moment to check in again. Right, So, if you look at data online, we mainly use coin a t M radar, and I mean, you gotta look it up. It's it's like a mountain, you know, it just increases and increases. For the amount of Bitcoin A t m s that were installed in especially in it does kind of look like it went up with the price of bitcoin as it was shooting up, and it's not that necessarily there are fewer. You know, there was a peak in August of two for the amount of Bitcoin A t m s that were in the United States eights and actually in September more Bitcoin A t m s were taken down than they were installed, which is like first for the industry. So the number of crypto A t m s peaked around thirty four thousand in August, and since then they've kind of come down a little bit fluctuated more. And so our question was, you know in this machine that it's physical, it's it's in the story flashes the price of bitcoin at you when you walk in, if you're somebody who is passing by, if the prices you know, nineteen thousand as it was when I was going around to these, or now you know more around sixteen seventeen thousand, even that's a lot less appealing than sixty thousand. So it's a question of, all right, these machines are still there, the data is showing that there are a few of them getting installed, is anyone even really using them? Are companies feeling okay about it? So we had a lot of questions and and we asked a lot of people a lot of the same question as to how the industry is doing after this massive boom. Yeah, and they they many of them seem quite sort of bullish still that they're saying, you know, they have to kind of be a bit more more deliberate and maybe focus on airs that had more foot traffic on the mainstream and less rural. And I remember when we were reporting early days, we were looking at the map because you can, you know, for listeners, you can search online and find all the maps of them in the U S. And you mentioned that there was one in the town you come from. Oh yeah, I mean I'm from Making, Georgia. I am really surprised, but there were, I mean several around the area. And I was just wondering who, who from my hometown would keep possibly using this right now, I'm I'm in New York City and in some ways, and maybe it's because I'm around people who deal more with crypto, but I'm like, yeah, sure, crypto a d M S in Making Georgia. Just the thought of somebody using a crypto a t M is it's so funny to me. I can't imagine their client would be. So, you know, we looked at usage, and you know, based on data from analysis, we saw that usage had had dropped significantly. But obviously, you know you you went there too, And although this is anecdotal, can you give us a sense of what it what it was like. You were literally just waiting there to see if someone showed up. Yeah, I just stood by the bitcoin a t M S hung out with store owners maybe chatted with a customer too. I never saw anybody use them. I talked to a lot of store owners, even some stores, you know, because you want to broader sample. I called some random places, and the consensus was that really hardly anybody was using these. You know. Again, it's anecdotal. Maybe one guy would say, like one or two people occasionally would come in. Another thing that did come up with at least two of the store owners is that they did say that they felt like there was a drop in demand for usage given bitcoins decline in prices. I mean, that makes sense, that's what the data has seen. But it was also interesting to know that store owners said maybe back in the day, a year ago, they might get one guy told me maybe four or five people who would come to the machine, and now it's maybe one, maybe two, but maybe nobody, you know. So it does kind of seem like these machines are are are sitting a little bit more in waiting for customers that they perhaps once had more of. Up next, more with Bloomberg reporter Carl Wanna on the present and the future of bitcoin e TMS. You know, we were expecting a bitcoin um spack, right bitcoining camps back and then um, also you know we all you know, that's still something that might be in the cards, right or not? What what what sort of is the outlook for for movement there? Right? Yeah, so I actually did look this up. There was a company that we were reporting on called bitcoin Depot. They were still trying to go public when we were doing our reporting. Bitcoin Depot is a fast growing cryptocurrency, a t M network letting you buy and sell bitcoin and multiple other cryptocurrencies instantly at thousands. They said it what happening? Kee looked it up. They issued a statement earlier this month saying that they still intended to do that. And you know, one thing that has changed since we were doing the book of our reporting is that, you know, the FTX empire has collapsed. Crypto prices have you know, plunged even more than they were already down. And so the fact that earlier this month the company said that they're still plowing ahead with this back deal is is interesting. And of note, another bitcoin, a t M provider, who was also tied to sort of the contagion now in crypto in a way, Um, one of the companies everybody's been following is Genesis the Lender, and we've been reporting how they have been trying to raise money from investors and warning that if they don't manage to raise they might have to file for bankruptcy. So can you maybe talk a bit about that about sort of how one of the bitcoin at M companies was sort of connected to Genesis the Lender. Right, Yeah, so our colleague Rachel but she found some really interesting stuff about the debt of coin Cloud. It range about five thou a t M s across the US and Brazil, and she found that they had tapped advisers to help them rework about a d million dollars of debt that they had accumulated to fund and aggressive expansion. She reported that back in November. So again things have changed quite a bit, very rapidly in the crypto space. But it does raise some questions about these companies that may have incurred quite a large bit of debt and what they're going to do with them. You know that company we were talking about earlier, Bitcoin Depot that does still intend ongoing public via back. They owe forty two point four million dollars under a term loan bearing a fifteent interest rate. As of June thirtieth, according to a proxy statement. Um, So it's a question of, you know, how how sustainable all these businesses. It does seem that some of them, oh a fair bit of money. Bitcoin Depot again they said that they're still going to go forward. The SPAC deal could end up injecting some very much needed cash and do that business. So. Um. You know. One of the pressures that the industry is facing in general now, not just becoining TMS, is regulatory pressure. Right, we've seen, especially after the collapse of FDx, regulators looking to crackdown policymakers as well. What's the current environment like for bitcoin E TMS and could that be seen as another sort of threat for growth in in the space? Right? It does depend on where you are. So for example, Singapore January they banned crypto a t M s. They said you have to shut down your operations. You know. In the UK they've also taken some more aggressive measures. It was in March that they that they hadn't approved any machines and they told operators you have to remove any of your units that are still in use. Um From where I am. In the United States, regulators have been a little bit more hands off. I guess you could say there's not a ton of laws in place kind of monitoring these machines. However, there are warnings. There are concerns, the FBI warning about fraudulent schemes targeting cryptocurrency a t ms, with criminals directing victims to use the A t m s and send funds that are then used for illegal activity. The A t m s are foundering. There was a report issued in September from the Government Accountability Office and they said that they said that crypto machines could be used to facilitate drug trafficking. It's also recommended that they should be reviewed for the registration requirements, and federal agencies agreed, but there hasn't necessarily been a lot of movement on that regulation space. So it's kind of another issue of everybody agrees, yes, there should be regulation for this crypto thing, but there are questions about who, how, and what exactly that means. So I know you don't have a crystal ball, but going forward, what you expect, or at least, what are what are you looking at? What are we looking at in terms of bitcoin A t m s, What would be interesting for you to see. Um, I would say, dicey, I guess you know all of crypto could go for more regulation. UM I could see this being something that could get a little bit more or maker interest intrigue. Especially you know in the US there hasn't been much, but there have been warnings and other countries and places have taken actions against them, so there is a question of what US regulators might do. There also might be fewer operators. This is something that even, like you said, Anna, the companies that we talked to, they were really bullish. They were super excited about crypto A t M s and the future, but a lot of them even said the they expect more consolidation in the space. Right, So there are some really big Bitcoin a t M operators, but there's a lot of smaller players too, and now that each machine isn't getting as much transactions, you know, there are questions of if it's a stainable business model to have a one off machine every now and again. So some of the larger players and of course this does play into their interests, but they kind of said there would be consolidation and there won't be as many operators and as many providers and people would start to seek out trusted platforms or kind of no names in the bitcoin a t M space. Whether they're right or not, who knows, but that was that was their guests, and I guess as far as utilization, you know, we have seen that the usage and the installation of these machines, they're not separate from bitcoin prices. So again we have no crystal ball. All that we know is that right now the price of bitcoin is significantly lower than it was a year ago. I don't know where will be a year from now, but I would have to assume that since the history of crypto a t m s has been somewhat tied to bitcoin prices, that the future of crypto a t m s will also be tied to those same prices. So I think you'll have to come and report back on whether your hometown still has a Bitcoin a t M as a judge, as a meter to whether whether the industry is still going strong. Yeah, I'll check in Christmas. I'll be going home so soon, so maybe i'll stop it. Great, all right, thank you, Carly, thank you. You can find more of Carl jana Is reporting on the Bloomberg terminal and on Bloomberg dot com. For more, be sure to check out our twice weekly newsletter, Bloomberg Cryptom. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your comments, questions, or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net. Yeah. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Verglina. Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Faruk and Sharon Barriro. Our associate producers are Ty Butler and Moses on Them. Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron. I'm Stacy Marie Schmal. We'll be back tomorrow