El Salvador, the first country to make Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender has dropped a place in the global crypto ATM rankings, with Australia registering 216 ATMs in 2022.
As part of El Salvador’s bid to cement Bitcoin’s status as legal tender, President Nayib Bukele installed more than 200 cryptocurrency ATMs across the country. This saw El Salvador become the third-largest crypto ATM hub in the world, behind the US and Canada, with 66 ATMs in September 2021.
However, Spain swiftly overtook them, with Cointelegraph reporting that they had installed 215 crypto ATMs in October 2022, making them the third largest hub. Spain has since continued to increase their installations, and now hosts 226 crypto ATMs as of this writing.
In the final three months of 2022, CoinATMRadar confirms that 99 of the crypto ATMs had been installed in Australia. As of January 1, 2023, there were 219 crypto ATMs registered in the country, overtaking El Salvador’s total of 66.
Australia now accounts for 0.6% of the global crypto ATM installation, and is well-positioned to overtake Asia, which has 312 ATMs. Worldwide, 38,602 crypto ATMs have been installed, with 6,071 added in 2022.
Related: Research Shows Florida Best Prepared US State for Cryptocurrency Adoption
Nigeria is also pushing for wider adoption of digital currency for their central banks (CBDC), the eNaira. This has seen the government limit ATM cash withdrawals to $225 (100,000 Naira) per week.
“Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels (internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards/POS, eNaira, etc.) to carry out their banking transactions,” said Haruna Mustafa, a director of banking supervision.
