(Newswire.net — April 25, 2022) –Cryptocurrency has taken the world by storm and has had unprecedented growth in recent years. As with any new concept, it takes some time for it to be adopted properly. A big issue with crypto has always been the lack of ability to make simple payments with it such as at the gas station or to just withdraw funds on the fly to use. This seems to slowly be changing though with the dawn of crypto ATMs.
How many crypto ATMs are there in the world and which country has the most? We’ll go over all of that and more so let’s delve into the crypto news now.
What are crypto ATMs?
Before we delve into the deep end of this topic and check out all of the numbers it is important to understand what crypto ATMs are to better understand the importance of their installations and just how big of a deal it is for them to be widespread.
Crypto ATMs are machines where you can exchange fiat money for cryptocurrency to add to your wallet or use your crypto wallet to trade crypto for fiat money which you can then withdraw and use as per usual. While most places won’t accept crypto as payment, these ATMs will allow you to still make use of cryptocurrencies you’ve bought, albeit in a roundabout way.
This is basically the equivalent of cars getting popular and making gas stations more widespread. For now, the number of crypto ATMs may be pretty meager but considering the growth, it has had so far we expect that they will become far more numerous in a relatively short time.
Let’s look at the numbers
According to the latest data available, there are currently 36700 crypto ATMs installed worldwide, with nearly 33 thousand of those being located in the US. While these numbers may seem meager it is important to note that around 20 thousand of these have been installed in 2021 alone. This shows immense growth which seems to be continuing in 2022 with thousands being installed this year so far.
The countries with the most ATMs outside of the US are Canada with 2.4 thousand, Spain with 225, El Salvador with 204, and Poland with 180 crypto ATMs available for use. As with regular ATMs not all of these allow for both withdrawals and deposits, but as traditional ATMs have also with time increased the number which has both options it can be assumed that the same will happen with crypto ATMs if given enough time.
Who has been installing these ATMs?
There have been a few groups installing them in various places with around 41.6% being installed by Genesis Coin. They are then followed by General Bytes at 21.4% and Bitaccess with 15.2% of the global share. While they of course aren’t the only ones adding crypto ATMs wherever they can, they are the ones who’ve done the most work so far and anyone with a crypto wallet is likely happy to have them around as their ATMs really do increase the quality of life of cryptocurrency owners by quite a bit.1
Conclusion
Crypto ATMs or an equivalent is pretty much a necessity given how popular cryptocurrencies have become and we are glad to see that they are getting the support that they deserve. As time goes on this may mostly or even completely mitigate one of the main downsides of crypto, that being the fact that you can’t use it for in-person payments in most places.
We hope that one gets installed close to you in the near future so that you don’t need to go through the hassle of sending your money from your crypto wallet to your bank account and then going to a regular ATM. Take care.