Albuquerque Becomes the Latest US City to Ban Bitcoin ATMs as Crypto Kiosk Crackdown Goes Local
City council ordinance gives operators and host businesses 45 days to rip out the machines
The crypto ATM industry’s grim year just got worse. Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city, has banned cryptocurrency ATMs within city limits after the city council passed an ordinance on Wednesday that also covers cashier-facilitated virtual currency transactions — the latest sign that the crackdown on crypto kiosks in the United States has shifted from state legislatures to city halls.
Under the new rules, the city will notify known operators and the retailers hosting their machines, and both face a 45-day deadline to remove the kiosks. Residents remain free to own, mine, and transfer crypto through online exchanges and personal wallets — the ban targets the physical machines, not cryptocurrency itself.
“Scammers, organized crime, and human traffickers”
District 1 Councilor Stephanie Telles, who co-sponsored the measure with District 7 Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn, did not mince words about why the city acted. She said 90 percent of crypto ATM transactions in Albuquerque are tied to fraud.
“No one who legitimately exchanges or transmits virtual currency uses these kiosks, because the high fees make them a ripoff,” Telles said in a press release. She argued the machines are primarily used by “scammers, organized crime, and human traffickers” because the transactions are instant, anonymous, and irreversible.
Fiebelkorn framed the ban as a matter of local urgency rather than ideology: “We cannot wait for federal regulators to solve this crisis while our residents are actively being targeted and harmed in our own neighborhoods.”
That framing matters. The federal government has been slow to regulate crypto kiosks at the national level, and cities like Albuquerque are deciding that the cost of waiting — measured in drained bank accounts and elderly fraud victims — is too high.
A nationwide wave of bans
Albuquerque’s move does not come out of nowhere. It follows a run of statewide prohibitions that has steadily gained momentum through 2026.
Indiana went first, banning the machines statewide in March. Tennessee followed in July. Minnesota’s ban, floated in the spring, took effect in August. Delaware has advanced a bill of its own, New Jersey is considering one, and Texas lawmakers are weighing a ban after kiosk scams cost residents of the Lone Star State an estimated 57 million USD.
The industry’s economics have collapsed alongside the regulatory pressure. Bitcoin Depot, once the largest operator in North America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May and pulled roughly 9,700 kiosks offline. Chief executive Alex Holmes cited transaction limits and, in some jurisdictions, outright restrictions or bans as key factors in the firm’s downfall.
The numbers behind the panic
Telles’s 90 percent fraud figure sounds extreme, but it is not an outlier. Washington, D.C.’s attorney general sued Athena Bitcoin last year after an investigation found that 93 percent of deposits into its seven kiosks in the city over five months were the product of fraud — with a median victim age of 71. Athena said at the time that it strongly disagreed with the characterization.
At the federal level, the FBI logged nearly 11,000 kiosk fraud complaints in 2024, with reported losses exceeding 246 million USD. The typical scheme is brutally effective: a scammer, often posing as a government agent, tech support worker, or romantic partner, walks the victim to a crypto ATM and has them insert cash — which is converted to cryptocurrency and sent to a wallet the victim will never control again. Because blockchain transfers are irreversible, the money is gone the moment the receipt prints.
That irreversibility, combined with the machines’ placement in convenience stores and gas stations, has made crypto kiosks a preferred endpoint for what fraud investigators call the “last mile” of a scam.
What it means for crypto adoption — and for regulators
For the crypto industry, the Albuquerque ban is another reminder that the kiosk segment has become a reputational liability. While exchanges, ETFs, and institutional custody platforms have spent years building compliance regimes, standalone crypto ATMs remained a largely unpoliced corner of the market where fees can run into the double digits and fraud filters are thin to nonexistent.
For regulators, the trend raises a familiar question: when federal action lags, how much enforcement happens at the state and city level? The answer, increasingly, is a lot. Indiana, Tennessee, and Minnesota show that states are willing to act alone, and Albuquerque shows that cities will too — even when the underlying asset remains perfectly legal to own and trade.
The ban also lands at an awkward moment for Bitcoin’s broader public image. The cryptocurrency traded around 77,200 USD as the ordinance news circulated, with sentiment gauges showing extreme greed and ETF flows dominating the institutional conversation. The contrast is stark: at the same time Wall Street deepens its Bitcoin exposure, local officials are treating the physical on-ramps to crypto as a public nuisance on par with payday lenders.
What happens next
Operators who fail to remove machines within 45 days face penalties under the ordinance, and host businesses share responsibility — a structure designed to pressure convenience store owners into auditing what sits in their own lobbies.
More bans seem likely. The Delaware bill is advancing, New Jersey’s senate panel has moved a proposal forward, and Texas — with 57 million USD in documented kiosk scam losses — has both the scale and the political motivation to go next. If the pattern holds, 2026 may be remembered as the year the crypto ATM, once a symbol of mainstream Bitcoin adoption, became a symbol of everything regulators say they are fighting.
For legitimate users in Albuquerque, the message from the council is pointed: buy your crypto online, hold your own keys, and skip the machine in the corner store. The era of the anonymous cash-to-crypto kiosk is ending, one city at a time.
45 days to rip out every machine is brutal but the Telles quote is hard to argue with. 57 million USD in kiosk scams in Texas alone and the industry answer was always just add more warning labels
meanwhile Minnesota only took effect in August and New Jersey is still considering. cities are moving faster than states now, kinda wild
nj still considering a ban while albuquerque did it in one council vote. states love their study committees, cities just yank the plug
My neighbor lost 4,000 euros to one of these kiosks after a fake bank security call. These machines have no business sitting next to a grocery checkout. Good on Albuquerque for not waiting.
Sorry about your neighbor. Same script hit my aunt in Aarhus, the kiosk was inside the supermarket she shops at every week. 45 days cannot come fast enough.
the fees really are the tell. 15%+ spreads and the lobby still acts shocked cities are saying enough lol
councilor Telles drops the 90 percent fraud figure and suddenly its city halls doing the regulating. genuinely asking where the federal consumer people have been on kiosks
90 percent of kiosk transactions tied to fraud in the city is a wild stat. hard to argue with the council after that number
45 days to rip them out and texas eyeing a ban after 57 million in resident losses. kiosk bros had a good run i guess
Telles is right about the fees though. 15-20 percent spreads on an ATM so grandma can send her savings to a scammer. Good riddance