Bitcoin ATM Maker Cash Cloud Is Down Amid Crypto Winter

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Photo: Jeremy Word (Shutterstock)

Surely you’ve seen one…a big orange horror pushed clumsily around the corner of your local supermarket or perched ominously near the neighborhood gas station. If you’re foolish enough to approach, the horror will encourage you to rummage through your wallet and shell out cash in exchange for play money on the internet…

It’s… *shudders*… the dreaded crypto ATM. A bizarre artifact of the current cultural moment, these machines have flooded American cities for the past few years, but the boom period of small bitcoin vending machines may soon be coming to an end. One of their biggest US operators is broke.

Cash Cloud, which supplies about 7.9% of bitcoin ATMs in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Nevada bankruptcy court on Tuesday, Cointelegraph reports. The company’s bankruptcy comes just weeks after Cash Clouds’ biggest financial backer, crypto lender Genesis Global, also filed for bankruptcy, yet another casualty of the massive cryptocurrency decline over the past few years. last nine months. The Las Vegas-based ATM provider, which sells its line of Coin Cloud crypto machines in the United States and Brazil, has only $50-100 million in assets, but has liabilities of between $100-100 million. $500 million, according to his bankruptcy filing. The filing also indicates that the company has between 5,001 and 10,000 creditors. I’m not a Goldman Sachs intern, but I’d say that sounds bad.

Gizmodo has reached out to Coin Cloud for comment and will update this story if they respond. In a statement provided to Cointelegraph, Chris McAlary, the founder and CEO of Coin Cloud, said that bankruptcy would allow the company to rework our debt, protect the interests of our creditors, and emerge as a stronger business. stronger and more financially stable. McAlary added that he is still optimistic about the future of the cryptocurrency industry.

In recent years, crypto ATMs have crept into less glamorous places in the Americas, popping up in city truck stops, gas stations, and convenience stores, as the brief national crypto glow has continued in earnest. This glow is definitely over. Axios writes that between September 2020 and September 2022, the number of machines in the United States more than tripled, bringing the total number to at least 63,000 machines, according to an online estimate. Of these, Coin Cloud played a significant role, accounting for a 7.9% share of the nations’ overall bitcoin ATM market, writes Axios. However, this prominence has not allowed it to escape the destructive reach of the ongoing crypto winter.

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