As cryptocurrencies were booming, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs grew accordingly. Now that Bitcoin & Co are trading well below last year's highs, the pace of installations is waning.

There are currently around 39,000 cryptocurrency ATMs installed worldwide, corresponding to a nearly 4,000 percent increase since 2017. But since the beginning of 2022, installation rates have plummeted as the cryptocurrency market crashed.

Still Higher Thank Previous Bull Market

Crypto ATM installations saw a meteoric rise from January 2020 to January 2022, increasing fivefold to 34,388 machines worldwide. But since the start of the year, barely 5,000 new machines have been installed, and this month, a net total of 44 were even removed. The last time the net number dropped for an entire month was in November 2015, according to US business magazine «Forbes».

«The customers are less active, hence the operators get less volume, hence (they) don't grow that fast and don't install that many ATMs» Patrick Mueller of online service Coin ATM Radar told Forbes. As of July, the net increase in ATMs was 572, modest compared to the peak of 2000 set in 2021. «However if you compare to the last bull cycle in 2017-2018, there was only around 250 net growth per month. So in the current bear cycle, we are still 2 (times) higher than the previous bull cycle», Mueller notes.

North America Leads the Way

The first physical ATM was installed in Vancouver, Canada, in October 2013, and of the roughly 39,000 crypto ATMs in operation, 95 percent are in North America. The US has by far the largest share of the global market at 87.9 percent, followed by Canada at 6.3 percent and Spain at 0.6 percent.

In Asia, Hong Kong, with a population of just 7.5 million, is the leader with 149 ATMs.

Still Low Penetration

Overall, the global installation rate of crypto ATMs is still very low. This may be partly because crypto ATMs do not function like typical ATMs, since they are rarely operated by financial institutions and do not link to bank accounts.

Instead, users deposit cash that is transferred to a digital wallet via a cryptocurrency QR code. Despite the integration of new cryptocurrencies, bitcoin remains the leading asset with over 99 percent of crypto ATMs supporting it.