Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee just signed into law a bill that bans cryptocurrency ATMs in the state starting July 1, 2026. According to The Record, Tennessee would be the second state to impose a blanket ban on these machines after Indiana, with Minnesota working on another measure that would do the same. State governments have been acting against crypto ATMs amid FBI warnings that Americans lost $333 million to fraud that use these machines as a vehicle to steal from the victims.
While crypto ATM machines aren’t scams per se, some cybercriminals use them as a common way of transferring funds from their targets. Because this is relatively new technology, many victims think that they work similarly to banks, which can detect and prevent fraudulent transactions. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and money deposited into the ATM would often be difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve. As such, the report claims they've become the "payment portal of choice for scammers."
