North Dakota Senate passes crypto ATM bill limiting daily transactions to $2K

The North Dakota Senate has passed a bill that regulates crypto ATMs while re-adding a provision capping daily transactions at $2,000 per user that was originally dropped by the state’s House.

The state’s Senate  passed  House Bill 1447 in a 45-to-1 vote on March 18. The bill was introduced to the  state’s legislative assembly on Jan. 15  and aims to protect residents from scams by introducing a slate of new guidelines for crypto ATMs and their operators.

The latest  version  of the bill passed by the Senate requires crypto  ATM and kiosk operators  to be licensed in the state as money transmitters, limits customer withdrawals across their network of ATMs to $2,000 per day, and issues fraud warning notices.

Initially, the bill limited crypto ATM customer transactions to $1,000 a day, but a House committee last month loosened the limits, with a $2,000 a day limit for the first five transactions within 30 days.

Now, the Senate has capped the transaction limits at $2,000. The bill will need to be sent back to the House to vote on the changes before North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong can either veto or sign the bill into law.

The bill would also require operators to use  blockchain analytics  to monitor for suspicious activity, such as fraud, and report it to the authorities, and to provide quarterly reports on kiosk locations, names and transaction data.

During a North Dakota House Industry, Business and Labor committee hearing on Jan. 22, the bill’s primary sponsor, House Representative Steve Swiontek,  said  that crypto ATMs currently lack protection measures, which has “allowed criminals to exploit them for theft.”

Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen had  signed similar legislation into law on March 13 , the Controllable Electronic Record Fraud Prevention Act, which is designed to help combat fraud.

Meanwhile, US Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who formerly chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed similar federal legislation on Feb. 25.

Durbin  cited a story from a constituent  who fell prey to a scammer claiming the authorities had issued a warrant for their arrest but could pay a fine through a $15,000 deposit at a crypto ATM to avoid jail as motivation for introducing the new law. 

Last September, the Federal Trade Commission  reported  fraud losses at Bitcoin ATMs had increased nearly tenfold from 2020 to 2023 and topped $65 million in the first half of 2024, with consumers aged 60 and older three times more likely to fall victim.

Coin ATM Radar  data  shows that the US still has the most Bitcoin ATMs, with 29,822 machines representing 78% of the global market.

Canada ranks second, at 9.2% of the market and 3,486 crypto ATMs, while Australia is third with 1,613 crypto ATMs, representing 4.3% of the market.