Americans lost $333M to bitcoin ATM scams in 2025. Here's why they're surging, how they work and how to protect yourself

Bitcoin was expected to chopped retired the middleman. Instead, it’s go a middleman’s imagination for scammers.

In 2025 alone, Americans mislaid much than $330 cardinal to bitcoin ATM scams, according to FBI data, a crisp emergence fueled by urgency, impersonation, and exertion galore consumers hardly understand. Now, 1 of the country’s largest crypto kiosk operators is paying the price.

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Bitcoin Depot, which operates much than 25,000 bitcoin ATMs crossed the U.S., has agreed to wage $1.9 cardinal to the authorities of Maine arsenic portion of a colony designed to compensate residents who were scammed utilizing its machines (1). The institution did not admit wrongdoing, but the statement spotlights a fast-growing signifier of fiscal fraud.

Under the settlement, Bitcoin Depot volition wage Maine astir $2 million, representing wealth that authorities officials accidental was taken by third-party scammers who utilized the company’s kiosks to defraud consumers. Victims volition beryllium capable to use for compensation done the state, which volition administer the funds.

Bitcoin Depot has refused comment, but nether the presumption of the colony avoided immoderate admittance of liability. Still, the company’s kiosks were the mechanics that allowed scammers to crook fearfulness and disorder into irreversible currency transfers. Bitcoin Depot is besides facing a abstracted situation successful Iowa (2), suggesting Maine’s lawsuit whitethorn not beryllium the past situation the manufacture faces.

Bitcoin was designed to chopped retired the middleman successful transactions by letting radical nonstop wealth straight to 1 different without going done a bank, recognition paper institution oregon outgo processor.

Instead of a slope verifying and signaling a transaction, bitcoin relies connected a decentralized web of computers to corroborate it and permanently log it connected a nationalist integer ledger known arsenic the blockchain. In theory, that means less fees, faster transfers, and nary cardinal authorization that tin artifact oregon reverse a payment. The tradeoff, however, is that there’s nary built-in lawsuit work oregon fraud protection. Once a bitcoin transaction is sent, it’s final, adjacent if it was triggered by a scam.