There are now almost 8,000 Bitcoin (BTC) ATMs, or BTMs, installed worldwide, according to data from Coin ATM Radar.
A Bitcoin ATM is a kiosk that lets users buy Bitcoin with cash or their debit card. Some BTMs also allow people to sell the pseudonymous cryptocurrency for cash.
Global crypto and virtual currency adoption is growing steadily, with payments giant Visa recently filing a patent for a “digital dollar” and JPMorgan Chase deciding it will begin providing banking services to major cryptocurrency exchanges.
Meanwhile, 10% of all physical bank branches in the US have closed down in the past decade. The COVID-19 outbreak has led to even faster adoption of digital platforms, as consumers perform transactions online or make contactless payments instead of using physical cash.
Daniel Polotsky, CEO and co-founder of CoinFlip, an established Bitcoin ATM operator in the US, told Crowdfund Insider that the company currently has a network of more than 600 ATMs based in 35 different US states.
Polotsky claims that CoinFlip has seen considerable growth in the number of transactions performed on its site, following the Coronavirus outbreak.
He said that the company is focused on providing modern financial services to 25% of American households that are underbanked.
In late April 2020, the number of Bitcoin addresses that hold at least 0.1 BTC (appr. $950 at time of writing) surpassed the 3-million mark for the very first time, as cryptocurrency investors were preparing for the Bitcoin halving event, which took place on May 11, 2020 and cut BTC’s supply by 50%.
The global adoption of the Lightning Network, or LN (a layer-two Bitcoin scalability solution for conducting faster micropayments), has also been growing with currently more than 13,000 LN nodes installed worldwide (up about 4% in past 30 days).
According to 1ML, there are 36,129 LN channels at the time of writing, up about 0.1% in the last 30 days.
The LN capacity stands at nearly 939 BTC (appr. $8.9 million) with 19 new LN nodes joining the network in the past 24 hours.