Bitcoin ATMs Forced to Close After Being Declared Illegal

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The Finan­cial Con­duct Author­i­ty (FCA) has told all cryp­to ATMs oper­at­ing in the UK to shut up shop.

The reg­u­la­tor also said that own­ers fail­ing to com­ply with the order would face enforce­ment action. 

The FCA said: “Cryp­to ATMs offer­ing cryp­to-asset exchange ser­vices in the UK must be reg­is­tered with us and com­ply with UK mon­ey laun­der­ing regulations.”

Britain has 81 Bit­coin ATMs, accord­ing to Coin ATM Radar, which tracks the machines around the world. 

Most are in con­ve­nience stores and super­mar­kets which the FCA has also writ­ten to.

They are run by at least eight oper­a­tors, none of whom are licensed by the FCA and all of whom have been told to shut down.

“We reg­u­lar­ly warn con­sumers that cryp­to assets are unreg­u­lat­ed and high-risk which means peo­ple are very unlike­ly to have any pro­tec­tion if things go wrong, so peo­ple should be pre­pared to lose all their mon­ey if they choose to invest in them,” the FCA said in a statement.

Oper­a­tor Gidiplus recent­ly lost a judi­cial review that attempt­ed to over­throw an FCA deci­sion to deny it a license.

The judg­ment con­clud­ed that there was a “lack of evi­dence as to how Gidiplus would under­take its busi­ness in a broad­ly com­pli­ant fashion.”

The FCA has clamped down hard on cryp­to busi­ness in the UK. Only 33 firms are on its reg­is­ter, and 22 of them are on a tem­po­rary approval list that expires at the end of this month. 

All cryp­to oper­a­tors under the Tem­po­rary Reg­is­tra­tions Regime (TRR) need to gain FCA approval if they wish to trade beyond the end of March.

The UK has also tight­ened its rules on cryp­to adver­tise­ments. The country’s Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards Author­i­ty (ASA) has banned sev­er­al cryp­to cam­paigns recent­ly, includ­ing tak­ing down a meme coin pro­mo­tion just last week.

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