加拿大希望禁止加密货币 ATM，因为担心欺诈行为使比特币成为政治目标

The country that gave the world its first crypto ATMs is now preparing to eliminate them entirely. In April 2013, a Vancouver coffee shop installed what would become crypto's most recognizable retail footprint, a machine that let ordinary people convert cash into Bitcoin without a bank account, a broker, or much friction at all. Thirteen years later, Canada has nearly 4,000 of these machines operating across the country, the highest concentration per capita in the world. And the federal government's Spring Economic Update 2026 has proposed banning them outright. The proposal didn't come out of the blue. Canadians reported losing more than $704 million to fraud in 2025, bringing total reported losses since 2022 to over $2.4 billion. The government estimates that only 5 to 10 percent of fraud incidents are ever reported, which means the real figures are almost certainly a multiple of what's on paper. Officials described crypto ATMs in the update as a “primary method for scammers to defraud victims and for criminals to place their cash proceeds of crime.” This kind of language sounds like a public verdict on a product category that's been operating under a compliance framework designed for currency exchange counters and Western Union branches. Crypto ATMs: Machines that made fraud easy to explain To understand why Ottawa moved on these machines before any other corner of crypto, we need to think about how regulators communicate risk to the general public, and what makes a target legible enough to act on politically. Crypto ATMs are physically present. They sit all over the country in convenience stores, gas stations, and shopping malls. They don't require a bank account to use; most transactions under $1,000 only require a phone number, and unlike a bank teller, there's no human interaction capable of recognizing fraud in progress. That combination of visibility and low verification threshold makes them uniquely exposed to political action. A regulator can point to the