Australia has surpassed El Salvador as the fourth-largest ATM hub in the world. As of 2023, Australia had a total of 216 crypto ATMs installations.
El Salvador, the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as legal cash, fell from the fourth-largest crypto ATM hub to the fifth-largest after Australia upped its installation game.
As part of El Salvador’s effort to legalize Bitcoin, the country’s president chose to install over 200 cryptocurrency ATMs. El Salvador became the third-largest ATM hub in the world, after the United States and Canada, with Spain and Australia surpassing it in 2022. Spain was reported to be the third-largest crypto ATM hub in October 2022 after installing 215 ATMs.
However, data from Coin ATM Radar, an internet analytics company that tracks the total number of cryptocurrency ATMs worldwide, shows that Australia deployed 99 crypto ATMs in the final three months of 2022.
While the United States continues to dominate the ATM market, according to report from Cryptopolitan, Poland has surpassed El Salvador in terms of the number of cryptocurrency ATMs, with 222 of its own. Spain and Canada continue to hold the second and third spots, respectively.
Despite impending stricter regulations, Australia continues with installations. The country’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that the nation has made an aggressive effort to strengthen its regulation of cryptocurrency services.
Early in 2023, the Australian government will also release a consultation paper to decide which digital assets will be subject to legal regulation. The implementation of AML and counter-terrorism financing measures, as well as the registration and licensing of crypto service providers, are just a few of the various tasks that this new rule will entail.
The Australian Federal Police has recently created a new cryptocurrency unit as part of its focus on cryptocurrencies with a focus on monitoring cryptocurrency-related transactions and a target on money laundering as more criminals want to circumvent the banking system.
