Bitcoin Depot, the largest crypto ATM operator in North America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 18, 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The filing is structured as a full wind-down and asset sale, not a restructuring. All 9,000+ kiosks have been taken off...
"States have imposed increasingly stringent compliance obligations, including new transaction limits, and in some jurisdictions, outright restrictions or bans on BTM operations. Under these circumstances, the Company's current business model is unsustainable." — Alex Holmes, CEO, Bitcoin Depot
Bitcoin Depot, the largest crypto ATM operator in North America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 18, 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The filing is structured as a full wind-down and asset sale, not a restructuring. All 9,000+ kiosks have been taken offline.
The collapse marks the second major crypto ATM operator bankruptcy in three years — following Coin Cloud's Chapter 11 filing in February 2023 — and signals the structural unraveling of the physical crypto kiosk industry in the United States. Bitcoin Depot's market capitalization fell from a peak of $1.6 billion in 2025 to $8.9 million at the time of filing, a 99.4% decline. Revenue dropped 49.2% year-over-year in Q1 2026, gross profit collapsed 85.5%, and the company reported a net loss of $9.5 million for the quarter.
The proximate causes are regulatory: three states have banned crypto ATMs outright, 29 states have enacted kiosk-specific legislation, and the FBI reported $389 million in crypto kiosk fraud losses in 2025. The industry's economic model — high-fee, low-compliance, cash-to-crypto conversion — has been legislated out of existence in its largest market.
Bitcoin Depot filed voluntarily for Chapter 11 protection on May 18, 2026. CEO Alex Holmes stated the filing aims to conduct "an orderly sale of assets" and a complete wind-down of operations. The company pulled its entire kiosk network — over 9,000 machines across 47 U.S. states, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong — offline simultaneously.
The company was founded in 2016 by Brandon Mintz and went public via SPAC merger with GSR II Meteora Acquisition Corp. on Nasdaq in June 2023. The SPAC deal valued the combined entity at approximately $885 million. Mintz later transitioned from Executive Chairman to a non-executive board role, with Alex Holmes assuming the CEO position.
Bitcoin Depot ended 2025 with $76.6 million in cash, cash equivalents, and cryptocurrencies, alongside an $18.5 million arbitration accrual. The company had already disclosed in March 2026 that it would be unable to file its annual 10-K report with the SEC by the required deadline — a standard indicator of financial distress.
Bitcoin Depot's financial trajectory shows a company that appeared stable at the annual level but was disintegrating quarter by quarter under regulatory pressure.
2025 Full-Year Results:
Q1 2026 Results (final quarter reported):
Market Capitalization:
Management guided for 2026 core-business revenue to decline 30–40% from 2025 levels before the bankruptcy filing overtook those projections. The gap between the annual and quarterly numbers tells the story: regulatory impacts that began in late 2025 accelerated sharply in early 2026 as state-level bans took effect and compliance costs compounded.
The crypto ATM industry faces a multi-front regulatory assault from state legislatures, federal agencies, and state attorneys general. The timeline of escalation:
State Bans:
State Legislation Breadth: As of April 2026, lawmakers in 30 states had introduced crypto-kiosk bills. Twenty-nine states had enacted kiosk-specific laws ranging from required warnings and transaction limits to strict licensing requirements and full prohibitions.
Attorney General Actions:
Federal Regulatory Action:
FBI and FinCEN data show the fraud problem scaling in parallel with the industry, ultimately providing the statistical ammunition for legislative action.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — CVC Kiosk Data:
| Year | Complaints | Reported Losses | YoY Loss Change | |------|-----------|----------------|-----------------| | 2024 | 10,956 | $246.7 million | +31% | | 2025 | 13,460 | $389 million | +58% |
Victim Demographics (2025):
Massachusetts AG Findings:
The Iowa AG's investigation found that approximately 95% of transactions at CoinFlip (another major operator) machines were fraudulent, costing Iowa consumers roughly $20 million over a three-year period.
The crypto ATM industry is shrinking. According to Coin ATM Radar, the global crypto ATM count fell to 38,928 in Q1 2026 — a net decline of 597 machines in the quarter. The U.S. holds 30,247 units (77.7% of global installations), though this figure precedes Bitcoin Depot's complete network shutdown.
Operator Landscape: The top ten global operators collectively controlled 30,450 machines (78.2% of total) prior to the Bitcoin Depot shutdown. With Bitcoin Depot's 9,246 machines (23.8% market share) now offline, the effective global count drops to approximately 29,700.
Precedent — Coin Cloud (February 2023): Coin Cloud, then the second-largest U.S. crypto ATM operator with 4,000+ machines, filed Chapter 11 with liabilities between $100–500 million and assets between $50–100 million. Its largest creditor was Genesis ($116 million loan), linking its collapse to the broader 2022-2023 crypto contagion.
CoinFlip — Next in Line? CoinFlip, which operates 5,500+ ATMs in 49 states, faces its own legal exposure. Iowa's AG sued CoinFlip after finding 95% of its machine transactions were fraudulent. Bloomberg reported in mid-2025 that CoinFlip was working with a financial adviser to explore a sale at a $1 billion+ valuation. Given the current regulatory environment, that valuation appears unreachable.
The crypto ATM model was built on a specific value proposition: instant, anonymous, cash-to-crypto conversion at physical locations. Each of these attributes has been eroded.
Fee Comparison:
Compliance Burden: Under FinCEN's August 2025 notice, crypto ATM operators must maintain full AML programs, file SARs, and implement kiosk-specific fraud monitoring — requirements that approach those of traditional money transmitters but apply to a business with far thinner margins after compliance costs.
User Base: The Massachusetts AG's finding that 80% of high-value kiosk users were scam victims suggests the industry's legitimate customer base is a fraction of its transaction volume. When the primary "customer" is a fraud victim being directed to your machine, the business model has a structural integrity problem that no compliance program can resolve.
Physical Infrastructure Cost: Maintaining 9,000+ kiosks in retail locations — with hardware maintenance, cash management, site agreements, and per-machine licensing in 47 states — creates a cost structure that digital-only competitors do not bear. Card networks' $4.7 billion deployment into stablecoin rails, as reported in recent coverage, represents the institutional bet that digital payment infrastructure will absorb whatever legitimate demand crypto ATMs once served.
The crypto ATM industry in the United States is in terminal contraction. Bitcoin Depot's bankruptcy is not an isolated corporate failure but the logical endpoint of a business model that derived the majority of its high-value transaction volume from fraud victims, charged fees an order of magnitude above digital alternatives, and operated in a regulatory vacuum that has now closed.
The remaining operators face the same three-sided pressure: federal compliance mandates that raise operating costs, state-level bans that shrink addressable markets, and AG lawsuits that create existential legal liability. With digital on-ramps offering lower fees, broader access, and simpler compliance profiles, the legitimate use case for physical crypto kiosks has narrowed to the point of economic irrelevance.
The question is not whether the U.S. crypto ATM industry will survive in its current form. The data indicates it will not. The question is whether any subset of operators can pivot to a compliant, low-fee model that serves a demonstrably legitimate user base — and whether state legislatures will give them the time to try.