El Salvador's Position has Been Shifted by Australia, the Country with the Fourth Most Crypto ATMs in the World

Crypto ATMs are now increasingly mushrooming. (photo: dock. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - El Salvador, the first country to legalize Bitcoin, has been pressed for a place in the total installation of crypto ATMs. This is because Australia has recorded 216 ATMs entering 2023.

As part of El Salvador's efforts to establish Bitcoin as legal tender, President Nayib Bukele decided to install more than 200 crypto ATMs across the country.

This move made El Salvador the third largest crypto ATM center at the time after the United States and Canada in September 2021. But Spain and Australia overtook the Central American country's number of ATMs in 2022.

In October 2022, Cointelegraph reported that Spain became the third largest crypto ATM center after installing 215 crypto ATMs. However, Spain continued with its installations and was home to 226 crypto ATMs by the time of the end of 2022. El Salvador's position as the fourth largest crypto ATM center was short-lived as Australia stepped up its game over the following months.

In the last three months of 2022, Australia deployed 99 crypto ATMs, confirms data from CoinATMRadar. As of January 1, 2023, Australia recorded 219 active crypto ATMs, beating El Salvador's 7 at the start of the year.

Australia represents 0.6% of global crypto ATM installations and, at this rate, is well positioned to overtake crypto ATMs in Asia, having 312 ATMs. The total number of crypto ATMs worldwide today is 38.602, of which 6.071 ATMs were installed in 2022 alone.

Nigeria's efforts to enforce adoption of its internal central bank digital currency (CBDC) — eNaira — forced the government to limit ATM cash withdrawals to USD 225 (100.000 naira) a week.

“Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels (internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, card/POS, eNaira, etc.) to carry out their banking transactions,” said Haruna Mustafa, director of banking supervision, during the announcement, as reported by Cointelegraph.