The kiosk fleet is shrinking while the forecasts point up

Arizona's attorney general says her office has recovered $171,332 for 35 crypto ATM scam victims under HB 2387, a refund law in force since September 26, 2025 ^[1]. That is a small sum attached to a large repricing: Coin ATM Radar data show the global installed base down 31.3% from a December 2022 peak of 40,072 machines to 27,524 on August 13, 2026, with the US down 43.6% from 35,037 in August 2022 to 19,754 on August 12, 2026 ^[4][5].

The arithmetic inside those two numbers is the part worth sitting with. The US lost 15,283 machines from peak; the world lost 12,548 ^[19][20]. The American contraction is larger than the global one, which means the rest of the world net-added roughly 2,735 units while the US market went backwards ^[21]. Geography, not appetite, is doing the work.

The demand-side story still reads as growth. Fortune Business Insights put the global crypto ATM market at $356.72 million in 2025 and projects a 54.8% CAGR through 2034 ^[6], with North America supplying 88.7% of 2025 revenue ^[7]. Set that revenue against the current installed base and you get roughly $12,960 per machine per year, and since the fleet was larger in 2025 the real figure is lower ^[22]. A 54.8% compound growth rate on top of an 88.7% revenue concentration in the one jurisdiction that is removing machines fastest is a forecast with a single point of failure.

What the rules actually do to unit economics is cap throughput and transfer fraud losses onto the operator. Arizona's law limits new customers to $2,000 a day and returning customers to $10,500, and requires scam warnings, acknowledgment screens and receipts showing the destination wallet address ^[3][2]. The FBI logged 13,460 kiosk-related complaints in 2025 with $388.98 million in losses ^[8], an average of about $28,891 per complaint ^[23]. At the new-customer cap, that average loss would take about 14 days to move ^[24]. People over 50 filed more than half the complaints and absorbed $302 million, or roughly 78% of reported losses ^[9][25].

Arizona itself recorded 460 complaints and $14.53 million in losses ^[10]. The $171,332 refunded is about 1.2% of that ^[26], which tells you the refund mandate is not yet a material balance-sheet event; it is a precedent and a reporting obligation.

The precedent is spreading. AARP counts 30 states with crypto kiosk laws since 2023, 13 of them adopted in 2026 ^[15], with Indiana, Tennessee and Minnesota pursuing outright prohibition ^[16]. A Hawaii law taking effect Oct. 1 would bar kiosks from accepting US dollars for digital assets, which removes the product rather than regulating it ^[17]. Representatives Sean Casten and Elvira Salazar have introduced the bipartisan Stop Crypto ATM Scams Act, adding registration, anti-money-laundering and consumer protection requirements ^[18]. Offshore, AUSTRAC suspended Cryptolink on August 9 and shut 96 machines ^[12], Germany's BaFin ran a countrywide raid in 2024 ^[13], and the UK's FCA halted 26 illegal machines in 2023 ^[14].

Watch three things. Whether the US unit count stabilises above or below 19,754 through the next reporting cycles ^[5]; whether Hawaii's dollar ban gets copied, since a ban ends the fee stream where a cap only thins it ^[17]; and whether refund liabilities in states with mandates start showing up as a disclosed expense line rather than an attorney general press release ^[1][15].