I was looking for the reason for the decommissioning but it wasn't specified in the article. Yeah, the service fee is probably the main reason but I still want to know is how many of the decommissioned ATMs were providing two-way service (allowing the buy and sell of BTC). I think they are more useful for cashing out in case a Bitcoiner desperately needs some cold cash.I don't think it's all about strategic location, bitcoins ATMs comes with some really high fees to transact on it, whether you want to buy or sell bitcoin, you will have to pay a hefty charge, and looking at such fees, p2p becomes a better option for traders who wish to cash in on some of their bitcoin, so instead of having to pay high fees to bitcoin ATMs just to cash in a few dollars in bitcoin, it's become much more better to do that through p2p.
Strategic location could be one. Maybe the closed BTMs (Bitcoin ATMs) were located in places where foot traffic isn't that good.
Imho that was expected. There are numerous reasons why there would be more decrease in number of crypto ATMs. Main reason would be fees. I havent checked every single ATM on Earth, but the one I have tested were charging around 10% fee. That is a lot. When I use credit card and mobile and get same result with 1-3% fee. Second reason - some of ATM require KYC when doing exchange. It is not a detailed one, but some were asking for mobile number verification. That is already a huge step of deanonymization. Plus all those cameras around. Third reason (that might be individual) - ATM I've checked accept cash in exchange for BTC. People dont operate with cash much. People dont carry much cash daily. Going to ATM, to exchange 20-100 EUR bill to BTC. I've got more interesting things to do in my free time :)
I was looking for the reason for the decommissioning but it wasn't specified in the article.I think the reason is hacker attacks, as the 0-day bug was exploited, which caused the loss of more than $1.5 million worth of bitcoin and the return of thousands of ATMs from Crypto ATM manufacturer General Bytes, in addition to many hacker attacks during this year.