Spain overtakes El Salvador to become third largest crypto ATM hub
The European country of Spain is officially home to the third-largest network of Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency ATMs after the United States and Canada.
Spain currently hosts 215 crypto ATMs, pushing El Salvador — wi 212 crypto ATMs — down to the fourth position after surpassing the country by 3 crypto ATMs. Data from CoinATMRadar confirms that Spain represents 0.6% of the global crypto ATM installations.
Moreover, the revelation places Spain as the highest contributor to crypto ATMs in Europe, which represents 14.65% of total installations in the continent, followed by Switzerland (144 ATMs), Poland (142 ATMs) and Romania (135 ATMs).
In 2022 alone, Spain installed 43 crypto ATMs and has previously shared its intent to install a total of over 100 ATMs by the end of the year — taking up the total to nearly 300 crypto ATMs once completed.
MediaMarkt, a German electronics retailer, and Confinity, among others, are leading the drive to install crypto ATMs across Austria, Germany, Spain and Greece.
On the contrary, global crypto ATM installations saw a negative growth since September 2022 and are on the path of slow recovery at the time of writing. Calculations based on data from the last 60 days show that around seven crypto ATMs are being installed daily worldwide.
Related: Crypto ATMs emerging as popular method for crypto scam payments — FBI
Greece takes the sixth spot in terms of cryptocurrency ATMs, and with the influx of tourists, Bitcoin ATM operator BCash shared insights on the usage statistics in the country.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, BCash managing director and co-founder, Dimitrios Tsangalidis, revealed that despite installing crypto ATMs in tourist hotspots, most usage comes from the main city area.
However, the island of Crete attracts a "very loyal cryptocurrency crowd,” as explained by Tsangalidis:
“There is a strong crypto community in Heraklion of Crete [which is] the location of one of our ATMs."According to Tsangalidis, a combination of crypto winter and tourist seasons has resulted in a slowdown in terms of regular traffic in crypto ATM usage.