The North Dakota Senate has given its approval to a bill aimed at regulating cryptocurrency ATMs, reintroducing a daily transaction limit of $2,000 per user that had initially been removed by the state’s House. The Senate passed House Bill 1447 with a convincing 45-to-1 majority on March 18.
Introduced to the legislative assembly on January 15, the bill seeks to safeguard North Dakota residents from potential scams by laying down a new set of guidelines for crypto ATM operators.
The latest iteration of the bill approved by the Senate mandates that crypto ATM and kiosk providers obtain a money transmitter license within the state. It also restricts customer withdrawals to $2,000 per day across their ATM network and necessitates the issuance of fraud warning notices.
Originally, the bill proposed a daily limit of $1,000 for crypto ATM transactions. However, a House committee decided to raise this limit to $2,000 for the first five transactions within a 30-day period last month.
Following the Senate’s decision to uphold the $2,000 transaction limit, the bill will now return to the House for a vote on the amendments. North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong will then have the option to either sign the bill into law or veto it.
The bill also stipulates that operators should employ blockchain analytics to detect suspicious activities like fraud and notify the authorities accordingly. Furthermore, it requires operators to submit quarterly reports detailing kiosk locations, transaction data, and names.
During a committee hearing on January 22, House Representative Steve Swiontek, the bill’s primary sponsor, highlighted the current lack of protection measures at crypto ATMs, noting that this has “permitted criminals to exploit them for theft.”
On March 13, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen enacted similar legislation – the Controllable Electronic Record Fraud Prevention Act – aimed at curbing fraud. In addition, US Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois proposed similar federal legislation on February 25.
Last September, the Federal Trade Commission reported that fraud losses at Bitcoin ATMs had skyrocketed nearly tenfold from 2020 to 2023, exceeding $65 million in the first half of 2024.
According to Coin ATM Radar data, the US leads the world in terms of Bitcoin ATMs, boasting 29,822 machines, or 78% of the global market. Canada and Australia follow, with 9.2% and 4.3% of the market respectively.
