The UK’s financial watchdog – Financial Conduct Authority has just warned all the cryptocurrency firms in the UK to shut down their crypto ATM machines in the country.
This is because the regulator hasn’t asserted them to be run in the country, due to their lack of verifications in the functioning. Warning that investing in cryptocurrencies is risky, the FCA said crypto ATMs of such can be used for money laundering, thus not accepted to be operated.
Closing Down Crypto ATMs in the UK
Aside from obtaining cryptocurrency from mining and trading, cryptocurrency exchanges have started offering them through specially set up ATMs today. And such ATMs are now available in several countries, where they let people deposit cash and receive the desired cryptocurrency to their digital wallet.
While this method is a convenient means, regulators often warn that fraudsters can use these machines to launder money. Thus, they banned this process in some countries, while asking the ATM operators to monitor better in other nations.
The UK, today announced that it’s banning all the crypto ATMs in its country since they’re against the law! The financial watchdog – Financial Conduct Authority in its press note stated that it hasn’t authorized any of the registered crypto exchanges to establish and run crypto ATMs.
Saying that these machines have to be in compliance with the UK Money Laundering Regulations, it stated Gidiplus case from past where it denied offering license for running crypto ATMs in the UK. This is possible because they’re following loose security practices of verification (no verification for transactions under £250).
And this is the same issue it’s citing now and asked all the crypto ATMs to be shut down. As per the Coin ATM Radar tracker, there are about 81 functional crypto ATMs in Britain, located mostly inside convenience and supermarkets.
Asking them to be shut down immediately, the FCA closed its statement with a warning to the citizens as;
“We regularly warn consumers that cryptoassets 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”.
