Bitcoin Depot Inc., North America's largest crypto ATM operator, filed for Chapter 11 liquidation on May 18, 2026, taking 9,246 kiosks offline and ceasing all operations. The filing marks the largest single shutdown event in the crypto ATM sector's 13-year history and accelerates a regulatory rec...
"The company's current business model is unsustainable." — Brandon Mintz, CEO, Bitcoin Depot, Chapter 11 filing statement (May 2026)
Bitcoin Depot Inc., North America's largest crypto ATM operator, filed for Chapter 11 liquidation on May 18, 2026, taking 9,246 kiosks offline and ceasing all operations. The filing marks the largest single shutdown event in the crypto ATM sector's 13-year history and accelerates a regulatory reckoning that has spread across 30 U.S. states, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The company reported a 49.2% year-over-year revenue decline in Q1 2026, an 85.5% drop in gross profit, and a $9.5 million net loss — a $21.7 million swing from the $12.2 million net income posted a year earlier. A $3.7 million hack of its crypto wallets and over $20 million in accrued legal judgments compounded the financial collapse. Lawsuits from the attorneys general of Massachusetts and Iowa allege Bitcoin Depot knowingly facilitated scam transactions and charged fees as high as 23%.
The bankruptcy is not an isolated event. The global crypto ATM count dropped from approximately 39,541 machines at the December 2022 peak to 38,928 in Q1 2026, and the removal of Bitcoin Depot's fleet — which represented 23.8% of all installations worldwide — will push the total below 30,000 for the first time since early 2022. Indiana, Tennessee, and Minnesota have banned the machines outright. Canada announced plans to remove all 4,000 of its crypto ATMs. The FBI reported $333.5 million in consumer losses from crypto ATM scams in the first eleven months of 2025 alone, a 33% increase over 2024.
Bitcoin Depot Inc. and fifteen affiliated entities filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on May 17–18, 2026, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The filing is structured as a liquidation, not a restructuring — the company stated it would run a sale-and-plan process targeting confirmation of a liquidating plan within 45 to 60 days.
The financial deterioration was severe and rapid:
| Metric | Q1 2025 | Q1 2026 | Change | |--------|---------|---------|--------| | Revenue | $163.9M (est.) | $83.2M (est.) | -49.2% | | Gross Profit | $31.2M | $4.5M | -85.5% | | Net Income / (Loss) | $12.2M | ($9.5M) | -$21.7M |
The revenue decline was driven by a combination of factors: state-level transaction limits and bans reduced the addressable market; enhanced Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance measures adopted voluntarily by the company reduced transaction volume further; and a cybersecurity breach resulted in $3.7 million stolen from the company's crypto wallets.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, Bitcoin Depot accrued over $20 million in legal judgments. The company was unable to file its Q1 2026 10-Q on time, submitting a Form NT 10-Q instead — a standard indicator of financial distress. Management formally concluded that "substantial doubt exists about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern."
As of the petition date, Bitcoin Depot's entire kiosk fleet — more than 9,000 machines across 48 U.S. states, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong — was taken offline and is no longer operating.
The crypto ATM sector's collapse is inseparable from its fraud problem. According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), U.S. consumers reported $333.5 million in Bitcoin ATM scam losses from January through November 2025, up approximately 33% from the $250 million total reported for all of 2024. More than 12,000 complaints were filed in that period.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), through its multi-country "Coin Laundry" investigation involving over 100 journalists from 38 news outlets, documented the extent of the problem:
The victim profile is consistent across jurisdictions. FTC data shows the 60-plus age group accounted for 71% of reported losses in the first half of 2024. The median individual loss in crypto ATM fraud cases was $5,400, well above the $447 median for general consumer fraud. The scams typically involve impersonation — perpetrators pose as bank representatives, government officials, or tech support agents, issue false warnings about "suspicious activity," and instruct victims to deposit cash into Bitcoin ATMs to "secure their funds."
The ICIJ investigation also exposed supply-chain complicity. Between May 2020 and March 2025, crypto firm Gemini provided more than half a billion dollars in bitcoin to Bitcoin Depot. Cumberland, a major over-the-counter trading firm, continued sending cryptocurrency to Bitcoin Depot until March 30, 2026 — six weeks before the bankruptcy filing — and is also a key provider of cryptocurrency to CoinFlip, the second-largest operator.
The legislative response has been broad and accelerating. Thirty U.S. states have introduced bills related to crypto kiosks in 2026, and 30 states have now passed laws regulating or restricting them.
Outright Bans:
Transaction Limits and Consumer Protections:
State Lawsuits:
Federal Legislation:
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the Crypto ATM Fraud Prevention Act (S.710), which would require operators to warn consumers about scam risks, take reasonable steps to prevent fraud, limit consumer losses, and provide law enforcement with enhanced tracking tools. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Blumenthal, Reed, and Welch. Durbin also offered the measure as an amendment to the GENIUS Act.
International Action:
The crypto ATM business model relied on high convenience fees extracted from users who, by definition, lacked access to or familiarity with lower-cost alternatives. Most U.S. crypto ATMs charged transaction fees between 6.5% and 20%, with purchase fees typically running 8% to 15%. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City found a median purchase fee near 16%.
The Iowa attorney general's investigation documented specific fee levels: Bitcoin Depot took a 23% cut of funds sent through its machines, and CoinFlip charged 21%. The Massachusetts lawsuit alleged fees ranging from 13% to 30%.
For operators, these fees translated to reported net income of $600 to $1,200 per machine per month at high-traffic locations. However, approximately 84% of each fee dollar was absorbed by cryptocurrency procurement costs, leaving thin net margins that were highly sensitive to volume declines.
When regulators imposed transaction caps — some as low as $500 per day — and enhanced KYC requirements, the volume economics collapsed. High-value transactions, which disproportionately drove revenue, were precisely the transactions most likely to be fraud-related and most affected by new restrictions.
This created a structural paradox: the revenue that sustained the business model was substantially derived from the activity that regulators were targeting. Massachusetts found nearly 60% of Bitcoin Depot's state revenue came from transactions linked to scams. The business model did not survive the removal of that revenue stream.
The global crypto ATM fleet stood at 38,928 machines as of late March 2026. The removal of Bitcoin Depot's 9,246 machines — 23.8% of the global total — will reduce the installed base to approximately 29,700, the lowest level since early 2022.
The remaining market is concentrated:
| Operator | Machines | Market Share (Pre-Bankruptcy) | |----------|----------|-------------------------------| | Bitcoin Depot | 9,246 | 23.8% (now offline) | | CoinFlip | 5,493 | 14.1% | | Athena Bitcoin | 4,045 | 10.4% | | Rockitcoin | 2,757 | 7.1% | | Bitstop | 2,372 | 6.1% | | Margo | 2,138 | 5.5% | | Other | 12,877 | 33.0% |
The top ten operators controlled 78.2% of all installations. The United States held 30,247 of 38,928 units (77.7% of the global total), making it the epicenter of both the industry and its regulatory crisis.
CoinFlip, the second-largest operator with 5,493 machines, explored a potential $1 billion sale in mid-2025, working with financial advisers to find a buyer, according to Bloomberg. The outcome of that process remains unclear. CoinFlip also faces the Iowa attorney general's lawsuit and operates in a market where its largest competitor has just liquidated — a development that could either open market share or signal that the entire sector's economics are unviable.
No major acquirer has publicly stepped forward to purchase Bitcoin Depot's assets through the bankruptcy process.
The crypto ATM sector operated for over a decade on a model that extracted 8% to 23% fees from users converting cash to cryptocurrency at physical kiosks. That model required high transaction volumes to cover procurement costs and thin margins. When federal and state investigations revealed that a substantial share of those transactions — in some markets, a majority — were linked to consumer fraud, regulators responded with transaction caps, bans, and lawsuits.
Bitcoin Depot's liquidation is the direct result. The company's CEO described the business model as "unsustainable" in the bankruptcy filing. The data supports that characterization: revenue halved in a single quarter, and the company could not operate profitably under the regulatory constraints imposed to protect consumers.
The remaining operators face the same structural challenge. Transaction limits reduce volume. Enhanced KYC reduces volume. Outright bans eliminate markets entirely. The question is whether any crypto ATM operator can build a viable business on the transaction volume that remains after fraud-linked activity is removed. The evidence from Bitcoin Depot's financial statements suggests the answer, at least for the largest operators, is no.
The physical crypto kiosk may persist in some form — smaller operators in permissive jurisdictions, lower-fee models, or machines integrated into broader financial services offerings. But as a sector, the high-fee, high-volume, low-compliance model that built 39,000 machines worldwide is in terminal decline. The economic value it generated flowed disproportionately to operators and scam networks, not to the end users the machines ostensibly served. Regulators have now priced that externality in.