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Australia ranks 3rd in crypto ATM installations after US and Canada

Australia now enjoys 234 crypto ATMs, which puts her in the third spot globally after the United States and Canada.

Despite the bear market and the record-low dynamics of new Bitcoin ATM installations around the world, Australia breaks into the top three nations globally by the number of crypto ATMs. It was only in the first days of January when the Aussies got to the fourth spot — since that time they installed 16 more machines.

According to Coinatmradar’s data, Australia now enjoys 234 crypto ATMs, which puts her in the third spot globally after the United States and Canada. In three weeks it outperformed Spain, which possesses 222 crypto ATMs.

It’s all about dynamics — Australia deployed 99 crypto ATMs, which is almost half of its total number, in only the last three months of 2022. And it doesn’t slow down. Since Jan.1, Australia has installed 16 new machines, while Spain has actually lost 4 and El Salvador, which holds the fifth global spot, hasn’t recorded a single new ATM.

*Crypto ATM distribution by continents and countries. Source: CoinATMRadar*

Overall, Australia’s numbers, as well as Spain’s and El Salvador’s, could hardly match the enormous proportion of crypto ATMs in the U.S. The States are home to 33.387 or 86.9% of all the machines in the world. Together with Canada (2.556) at the time of writing, they hold a stunning 94.4% of all the crypto ATMs.

A year-long bear market in 2022, accompanied by geopolitical tensions and global inflation, resulted in a dramatic slowing down of the crypto ATMs installations. Only 94 Bitcoin ATMs were added between July to the end of 2022 to the global network in contrast to 4,169 ATMs during the first half of 2022.

In January 2023, the Australian city of Coolangatta got its first Bitcoin ATM with integrated Lightning Network capabilities. It works similarly to traditional crypto ATMs but saves significant time due to the layer-2 Lightning solution. And also allows for purchasing very small amounts of BTC.

Lightning Network gets physical form in Australia with Bitcoin ATM

Lightning-enabled Bitcoin ATMs promise to offer instant transaction support and a significant cut in cost from traditional crypto ATMs.

The Australian city of Coolangatta has gotten its first Bitcoin ATM with integrated Lightning Network capabilities. The new ATM has been installed at The Strand shopping center in Coolangatta and is now available for use by the public.

A Bitcoin Lightning ATM works quite similarly to traditional Bitcoin ATMs but saves significant time because of the instant transaction capabilities of the layer-2 Lightning solution. It also allows for purchasing very small amounts of Bitcoin (BTC), mostly in satoshis — the lowest denomination of Bitcoin, with 1 satoshi equal to 0.00000001 BTC.

At the moment, cryptocurrency ATMs settle transactions on the blockchain directly, but this has restrictions of its own. For instance, operators had to adapt to batching transactions when miner fees on the Bitcoin network considerably increased between 2017 and 2018.

In practice, this means that even though a user purchases BTC via an ATM, it is not immediately transmitted to them. Operators have processes in place that wait for other ATM network users to utilize the machines before grouping and sending out transactions for several users at once in one bulk transaction. This problem can be resolved to a significant extent with the help of the Lightning Network.

Using Lightning, the transaction becomes immediate because the operator doesn’t need to batch the funds — as soon as cash is inserted, the user receives payment via the Lightning Network. While there is still a debate over whether the fees will be significantly reduced, they will likely be lower than an on-chain payment.

The recent installment of the Lightning-enabled Bitcoin ATM in Australia comes in the wake of the country overtaking El Salvador to become the fourth-largest Bitcoin ATM hub in the world. Australia had 216 ATMs stepping into 2023.

According to Coin ATM Radar, the total number of crypto ATMs worldwide is currently 38,602, out of which 6,071 ATMs were installed in 2022 alone.

Bitcoin ATM operator RockItCoin acquires Tao Bitcoin

The transaction included 56 machines from Tao Bitcoin, a regional operator in the south of the United States.

Bitcoin (BTC) ATM operator RockItCoin announced the acquisition of Tao Bitcoin on Oct. 25. Tao Bitcoin is a regional ATM operator with 56 machines, mostly located in the south of the United States.

According to the company, the acquisition was part of the company’s strategy to find value and synergies among smaller and regional players in the Bitcoin ATM space. With the deal, the machines operated by RockItCoin came to almost 1,900 units across 44 U.S. states.

The Bitcoin ATM industry is poised for consolidation in 2023, according to RockItCoin president Ben Phillips, with the company likely to acquire more players in the coming months. He stated:

“Where costs are increasing for many of the regional players, our existing networks, relationships and operations are poised for scalability.”

RockItCoin CEO and founder Michael Dalesandro also anticipated additional acquisitions in the fourth quarter of 2022:

“We are constantly on the lookout for ways to expand our footprint while continuing to serve our customers with convenient physical locations where they can safely and efficiently buy and sell cryptocurrency.”

Over the next few weeks, the former Tao Bitcoin ATMs will be rebranded as RockItCoin locations. Founded in 2016 by John Taylor and Andrew Arterburn, Tao Bitcoin analyzed several offers for the machines but decided to close the deal with RockItCoin after considering “values closely aligned with our own.”

“We are proud of the company we started from scratch to offer consumers easy access to cryptocurrency,” stated Taylor about the acquisition.

Over the next five years, the global cryptocurrency ATM market is forecast to grow rapidly to a half–billion-dollar market. A report published in July by Research and Markets estimates a compound annual growth rate of 59% for the industry from 2022 to 2027. It currently values the crypto ATM market at $46.4 million and expects this value to increase to $472 million over the time period.

Among the main drivers of this growth are the increase in remittances and fund transfers in developing countries, fluctuations in monetary regulations and crypto ATM installations.