Australia is now the fourth-largest ATM hub in the world, surpassing El Salvador. Australia had 216 crypto ATM installations in total as of 2023.
The fourth-largest crypto ATM hub, El Salvador, which was the first nation to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, dropped to fifth after Australia upped the ante on installation.
The president of El Salvador made the decision to install more than 200 cryptocurrency ATMs as part of the country’s campaign to make Bitcoin legal.
El Salvador surpassed Spain and Australia in 2022 to become the third-largest ATM hub in the world, behind the United States and Canada. After deploying 215 ATMs, Spain was reportedly the third-largest hub for cryptocurrency ATMs in October 2022.
However, data from Coin ATM Radar, an internet analytics firm 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 statistics from Cryptopolitan, Poland has surpassed El Salvador in terms of the quantity of cryptocurrency ATMs, with 222 of its own. Spain and Canada continue to hold the second and third spots, respectively.
Australian 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 recently formed 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.