A different kind of ATM is popping up in stores, supermarkets and malls across Southwestern Pennsylvania. These, however, are not intended to spit out dollars.
They offer cryptocurrency — a decentralized, digital currency that has no government backing or regulation. Its value is volatile, fluctuating like a stock. It relies primarily on how much investors will pay and speculation on its future worth.
In the past year, dozens of cryptocurrency ATMs have gone live throughout the region to make it more convenient for people to buy and sell digital money.
Operators such as American Crypto, Bitcoin Depot, Bitcoin of America, CoinFlip, Freedom Gateway, GetCoins, RockItCoin and others have installed machines in businesses, mostly convenience stores. The ATMs also can be found inside Giant Eagle stores, Ross Park Mall and Pittsburgh International Airport. Others can be found across Westmoreland County and the Alle-Kiski Valley, in Downtown Pittsburgh and Lawrenceville, in Bethel Park and Mt. Lebanon.
A corporate competitor such as Coinstar Asset Holdings of Bellevue, Wash., has had crypto ATMs in the Pittsburgh region since 2019. Atlanta-based Bitcoin Depot has its machines scattered in about 100 businesses across the state. Nationwide, there are about 30,200 crypto ATMs, according to ATM Marketplace.
“We’re expanding almost every week,” said Neil Bergquist, chief executive of Coinme, the largest licensed cryptocurrency ATM network in the nation. The company operates in 48 states, including Pennsylvania, through a system of ATMs and Coinstar kiosks — such as those located at Giant Eagle stores to convert change into cash, gift cards and, now, cryptocurrency.
O’Hara-based Giant Eagle turned to Coinstar when it introduced crypto ATMs in 2019, including at a store in North Huntingdon.
“The majority of the country is crypto curious,” said Bergquist, who estimates about 15% of Americans own digital currency.
Some 86% of Americans have heard about cryptocurrencies, according to the Pew Research Center. But estimates of how many Americans have put their money into the digital currency — and how many people truly understand it — vary widely.
About 21 million Americans — about 14% of the nation’s adults — own a piece of the cryptocurrency world, according to Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Other surveys put the number at closer to 60 million. Either way, more Americans in the past two years have been investing in the crypto market, which consists of about 17,000 options across more than 400 exchanges and holds a worldwide value of $1.8 trillion. That followed a crash of more than $500 billion on Friday alone after Russia said it might ban cryptocurrencies. China did the same last fall.
In all, the cryptocurrency market has lost $1.2 trillion in value since Nov. 8, when it topped $3 trillion, according to Bloomberg.
That plays into longstanding warnings from skeptics such as Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Investing in cryptocurrency does not make sense for any size of transaction, he said.
“It’s very similar to going to Vegas and rolling the dice,” said Hanke, one of the world’s leading experts on hyperinflation. Without a balance sheet and assets to generate cash flow, “the highly speculative asset has a fundamental value of zero.”
Whales, the name given to investors who own large amounts of cryptocurrency, “manipulate the market,” Hanke said.
On Friday alone, some $700 million worth of cryptocurrency was liquidated worldwide.
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