ALBUQUERQUE BANNED EVERY CRYPTO ATM IN THE CITY AND GAVE OPERATORS 45 DAYS — THE 90% FRAUD FIGURE BEHIND THE VOTE CAME FROM A COUNCILOR — AND THE HONEST ANSWER IS THAT BITCOIN LOSES ALMOST NOTHING

Albuquerque has banned crypto ATMs across the whole city. Operators have 45 days to pull the machines. The ordinance was carried by District 1 councilor Stephanie Telles and District 7 councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn, and the number that did the arguing was Telles saying 90% of crypto kiosk transactions in the city are tied to fraud.

Ninety percent is an enormous claim and it arrives with no study attached to it. A councilor said it, a council voted on it, and every machine in a city of half a million comes out. That is worth noticing on its own, separately from whether the machines deserve it.

Because here is the part our side does not like saying out loud: they probably do. Nationally there were nearly 11,000 kiosk fraud complaints in 2024 worth more than $246 million. Divide it. That is more than $22,000 per complaint. These are not teenagers losing forty dollars. That is the shape of somebody elderly on the phone with a man claiming to be from the IRS, being walked to a gas station and told which buttons to press.

So we are not going to defend the kiosk. A crypto ATM is the worst way to buy bitcoin that has ever been invented. It charges you double-digit fees, it takes your ID, it photographs your face, and it exists in that particular spot because somebody worked out that a machine which turns cash into an irreversible transfer is useful to a man on a phone. Bitcoin Depot filed for bankruptcy in May and its own chief executive blamed transaction limits and bans.

Bitcoin loses almost nothing here. You can buy it on an exchange, from a person, through an app, or by working for it. What Albuquerque removed is the most expensive and most surveilled door in the building.

Keep both of these in your head at once, because the people on each end of this want you to hold only one. The kiosks really are a scam vector. And a citywide ban built on a number nobody has to show you is how the next rule gets written too, and the next one may not be about a machine you were never going to use.