Bitcoin’s BTC$77,336.25 recovery from February lows, which had begun to look like a new bull run, hit a wall last week at the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) positioned just above $82,000. Since then, prices have pulled back to $77,500 in a move reminiscent of 2022 when a 43% relief rally failed at the same indicator before bitcoin resumed its decline.
Analytics firm CryptoQuant’s latest report offers a compelling explanation for why the rally failed to break through the critical average, a long-term trend line traders often treat as the dividing line between a bear-market bounce and a real recovery.
The bigger issue is demand.
CryptoQuant says the April and early May rally had been supported by three things: leveraged futures buying, spot demand, and U.S. ETF inflows. All three have now weakened. The firm’s Bull Score Index has fallen from 40 to 20, a level the firm calls “extremely bearish” and one that matched the February-March period when bitcoin traded between $60,000 and $66,000.
The clearest cross-check is the Coinbase bitcoin premium, which has remained negative through much of the May rally and the subsequent correction, CryptoQuant points out in the report.
The premium measures whether bitcoin is trading higher on Coinbase than on offshore venues; a positive reading is treated as a sign of relatively stronger U.S. demand, a negative reading as evidence that U.S. investors aren’t paying up for exposure.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have flipped into sellers to match. Weekly data from SoSoValue shows the products lost about $979.7 million in the week ended May 19, on top of roughly $1 billion of outflows the prior week. The reversal follows six straight weeks of inflows that helped fuel the rally.
Is there any demand at all?
Korea’s kimchi premium, which measures demand for BTC on Korean exchanges, has dropped below zero, according to CryptoQuant data, meaning there’s no above-normal demand on exchanges in the country.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong’s three spot bitcoin ETFs, run by ChinaAMC, Bosera Hashkey, and Harvest, have rarely cleared a few million dollars in combined daily volume through May.
If the correction deepens, CryptoQuant identifies $70,000, the traders’ on-chain realized price, as the next major on-chain support. That level capped rallies in October and January. This time, it would have to hold them up.
AI Financial, formerly known as Alt5 Sigma, wants the market to know that it’s more than just its WLFI$0.06221 token holdings, and calling it a WLFI treasury company isn’t the right way to describe it.
“AiFi continues to operate an active fintech and digital payments business while executing on a broader long-term strategy across digital assets, settlement infrastructure, tokenization, and next-generation financial technologies,” a company spokesperson told CoinDesk in an email. “Characterizing the company solely as a ‘treasury company’ does not accurately reflect the breadth of AiFi’s operating business.”
AI Financial operates ALT5 Pay, its crypto payments platform, and ALT5 Prime, its over-the-counter digital asset trading business. Since quarter-end, it has also announced the acquisition of tokenization and ICO infrastructure firm Block Street, signed a commercial agreement with SuperQ Quantum, and outlined broader expansion into digital financial infrastructure.
The response from the spokesperson comes after AI Financial’s latest SEC filing painted a starkly different picture of its current financial profile.
The Nasdaq-listed company disclosed in this filing that it held 7.28 billion WLFI tokens, worth $706.4 million at the end of March, down from an acquisition cost of roughly $1.46 billion. By comparison, its operating fintech business generated just $4.7 million in quarterly revenue.
AI Financial also warned in this filing that recurring losses and a $5.5 million working capital deficit raise “substantial doubt” about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern within one year after the financial statements were issued.
Complicating the picture further, the company’s WLFI holdings remain contractually locked, limiting its ability to convert its largest asset into cash. AI Financial ended the quarter with just $10.5 million in cash.
AI Financial’s relationship with WLFI goes far beyond ownership. World Liberty CEO Zach Witkoff serves as the company’s chairman. Co-founder Zachary Folkman sits on its board; WLFI has lent it $15 million, secured by WLFI tokens, and WLFI holds rights equivalent to roughly 46% of its fully diluted equity.
But the question is, can investors see past WLFI when looking at AI Financial as a whole?
AI Financial may be building a broader fintech and digital infrastructure platform, but its SEC filing suggests WLFI remains the asset defining its financial story.
Unlike a typical digital asset treasury company holding bitcoin or another liquid asset, AI Financial’s relationship with WLFI is more complex: the issuer of its core treasury asset also has deep governance, lending and equity ties to the company itself.
Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX reported holding 18,712 Bitcoin worth $1.45 billion in a recent filing, over 10,000 coins more than blockchain tracking firms had estimated.
In the company’s S-1 registration statement, filed as part of its bid to become a public company on June 12, SpaceX revealed it purchased Bitcoin (BTC) at an average of $35,320 per coin. Its reported holdings would make it the seventh-largest among public companies.
SpaceX’s Bitcoin holdings as of Dec. 31, 2025. Source: SEC
SpaceX is poised to become the biggest IPO in capital markets history, aiming to raise around $75 billion with an estimated valuation of $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion. Buying its stock would give investors a way to gain exposure to Bitcoin, alongside the company’s aerospace and AI businesses.
SpaceX Bitcoin accumulation began five years ago
SpaceX began buying Bitcoin in early 2021, around the same time that Musk’s Tesla started investing in the cryptocurrency.
The latest SEC filing shows that SpaceX has considerably more Bitcoin than Tesla, which holds 11,509 Bitcoin. It also surpasses estimates from BitcoinTreasuries.NET and crypto analytics firm Arkham, which estimated SpaceX’s Bitcoin holdings at only 8,285 Bitcoin.
BitcoinTreasuries.NET data shows that SpaceX only holds 8,285 Bitcoin on its balance sheet. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET
SpaceX chasing largest addressable market in “human history”
SpaceX is one of few private companies with large valuations looking to go public in 2026, along with AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic.
Going public could unlock billions of dollars in capital for the company to fund projects like Starlink, orbital data centers and potentially Mars colonization.
In the filing, SpaceX said it is targeting the largest actionable total addressable market in “human history,” estimating a $28.5 trillion opportunity spanning AI, space and connectivity.
Magazine: eToro founder timed Bitcoin top perfectly due to belief in 4 year cycles
On Saturday, May 16, 2026, the world’s newest physical Bitcoin space opened in Nairobi, Kenya.
It’s called Node NBO (NBO is short for Nairobi), and it will serve as a co-working space for notable Bitcoin, freedom tech, compute, and energy companies and organizations in Africa, including Fedi, Gridless, and BTrust as well as the Human Rights Foundation (HRF).
A screenshot from the homepage of the Node NBO website.
The facility will also be home to three labs — an open-source energy lab, an open-source Bitcoin mining lab, and an AI compute lab. These labs will serve as places where teams can build, design, and assemble new products as well as strategize implementation.
And Node NBO also has an event space, where just over 150 people can gather for special occasions and meetups.
The first of such occasions was the soft launch of the facility on May 16th, which was attended by Fedi CEO Obi Nwosu; Gridless’ co-founders, Janet Maingi, Erik Hersman and Philip Walton; BTrust CEO Abubakar Nur Khalil; and Minmo CEO Jodom Konuko (Minmo team members will also work out of Node NBO) amongst a number of other notable members of the Kenyan Bitcoin community.
BitDevs Nairobi attendees as well as quantum computing researchers and developers from Nairobi will also meet in the event space on a monthly basis.
“We needed a place where people who are working on hard things can come into proximity with each other, especially when there’s overlapping areas that need specialization,” said Hersman in regard to the impetus behind creating Node NBO.
“We wanted to get the people behind this foundational layer of this tech we’re all using in a place where they can find each other, work on cool stuff around each other, and accelerate each other,” he added.
“We couldn’t be more excited to be part of Node NBO,” said Nwosu. “There’s so much synergy already happening between the companies and organizations involved with Node NBO that it just makes sense to bring them all under one roof.”
Showcasing African Projects to Global Visitors
Node NBO is located in Gigiri, Nairobi, a northern region of Nairobi that Hersman referred to as a “diplomatic area.”
Facilities in the area frequently host international visitors, as Gigiri is home to the United Nations’ Nairobi headquarters, which is just walking distance from Node NBO.
An image from inside the Node NBO facility. | Photo courtesy of Node NBO
Hersman noted that another reason for the space was that he, too, often hosts visitors from abroad, and he wanted to create a hub at which he could showcase the many different projects that are currently being developed in Africa.
“We’ve had everybody from team members from NVIDIA to the Rockefeller Catalyst Fund to high-level team members from Google and Microsoft come to visit and now we have a place where we can give people like this a tour of what’s happening,” said Hersman.
A Unique Facility for Unique Infrastructure Companies
The new facility will be unique in that it will be powered solely by solar panels.
“Gridless is putting in solar power over the whole facility so that it actually runs fully off of its own energy,” said Hersman.
This is the sort of ingenuity that Gridless has become well known for.
In its four years of existence, it hasn’t just capitalized on mining bitcoin with renewable, hydro energy in rural Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia, and it’s created a model that has catalyzed the electrification of these rural regions while keeping the cost of electricity for residents of these regions low.
Now its team members will be officemates with team members of a Fedi partner enterprise called SateNet.
SateNet is a project through which physical towers that broadcast satellite internet are installed in underserved communities such as Kenya’s Kibera, home to the Afribit community, and South Africa’s Mossel Bay, home to the Bitcoin Ekasi community.
We built SateNet around one principle: the infrastructure should belong to the community, not an organization.
That shapes every decision from how sites are structured financially to how operators are trained.
Through SateNet, residents of these communities can purchase high-speed internet at low rates when they pay in bitcoin via the SateNet Mini App, available via the Fedi app.
“With Bitcoin and other freedom technologies, people need the internet to use them,” said Nwosu. “This was one of the main reasons why we decided to help the communities with whom we work to gain access to more affordable internet via SateNet.”
The local community will come to share ownership and management of the internet infrastructure, enabling the internet to become a self-sustaining local utility.
“Node NBO is a space to help showcase the infrastructure of this new technology — the actual steel and silicon of the stuff,” said Hersman. “We’re telling the story about how Africa has these companies that have a stake in the ground as far as infrastructure.”
Working Together the Kenyan Way
According to Hersman, many important decisions in Kenya are made in a communal fashion and he feels that Node NBO can serve as a hub at which such types of decisions can be made.
“The Kenyan way of doing things requires people to see each other face to face from time to time,” explained Hersman. “We come together as a community to make decisions.”
And this is no different when it comes to Nairobi’s Bitcoin community.
“The Bitcoin community that builds most things in Kenya is here in Nairobi,” said Hersman.
“We work with each other. We don’t compete against each other,” he added.
“So, this is part of the culture of who we are well before any of this technology — this is just part of Kenya.”
This article was reposted from Fedi’s blog, and is also available here.
This is a guest post by Frank Corva, who is a content producer at Fedi. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
The U.S. Federal Reserve took another step toward special limited payment accounts that would give a lighter version of the master-account services the central bank offers to its fully-fledged banks, opening a comment period on the latest description of the new accounts.
Firms with diverse business models can use such accounts to clear and settle payments to increase speed and reduce their costs, but without master-account status, the Fed explained in a Wednesday statement. The central bank, which supervises and regulates its member banks, had issued a request for information in December to start crafting the concept with an initial 45-day comment period, and this approach is “substantially similar to the prototype outlined” in that effort.
Obtaining this enhanced access to the Fed’s payment rails has been a significant goal within the crypto sector, and the Fed’s earlier proposal was commonly referred to as “skinny” accounts.
“Payment account holders would not have access to intraday credit or the discount window, would not earn interest on balances held at a Reserve Bank, and would only have access to payment services with automated controls to prevent overdrafts,” the Fed said in the statement on its new proposal, which will be opened for a 60-day comment period.
But in response to comments to the Fed since December, it did overhaul parts of the idea, noting that “closing balance limits would be based on an institution’s expected payment activity and the maximum closing balance was increased.”
In March, Kraken became the first crypto bank to get a limited master account, though that access was granted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and not under a federal rule from the Fed board in Washington. The Fed said it’s now asked the regional banks to pause their consideration of certain applications while it finishes the rule.
Just a day earlier, President Donald Trump issued a related executive order that asked the Fed to review how it grants uninsured depository institutions and non-bank financial firms access to payment accounts and services. This order also requested examination on the 12 regional Fed banks acting independently of the board to set up payment accounts.
Nvidia (NVDA) posted another blockbuster quarter on Wednesday, as demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure pushed revenue, profit and cash flow to record levels.
The chipmaker reported first-quarter revenue of $81.62 billion, up 85% from $44.06 billion a year earlier and above Wall Street estimates of $78.9 billion, according to FactSet data. Adjusted earnings came in at $1.87 per share, beating analyst expectations of $1.76 per share. The company also gave stronger-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, forecasting revenue of roughly $91 billion.
Meanwhile, the company also moved to return more cash to shareholders. Nvidia’s board authorized an additional $80 billion in stock buybacks and raised the quarterly dividend to 25 cents per share from 1 cent previously.
However, despite the beats, positive outlook and shareholder returns, the stock was down about 1.5% at the time of publication. Investors were likely looking beyond the quarter and into the potential challenges in growth opportunities for Nvidia as competition for AI chips continued to grow.
Bitcoin miners with exposure to AI and high-performance computing infrastructure traded modestly higher following Nvidia’s earnings report. Shares of Core Scientific (CORZ) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) each rose slightly in after-hours trading as investors continued to view some miners as potential beneficiaries of growing demand for data centers, power capacity and AI computing infrastructure. IREN (IREN), which rose initially, is down about a percent.
“The buildout of AI factories — the largest infrastructure expansion in human history — is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. “Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries,” he added.
Data center growth
Specifically for bitcoin miners moving towards the data center business, there was some positive news in the chipmaker’s earnings.
Nvidia’s Data Center business continued to drive growth as cloud providers, enterprises and governments expanded spending on AI infrastructure powered by the company’s chips.
Hyperscalers generated more than half of Nvidia’s $75 billion in Data Center revenue during the quarter, reaching roughly $38 billion and rising 12% from the previous quarter, CFO Colette Kress said on the company’s earnings call.
The remaining $37 billion came from a segment Nvidia now calls ACIE, which includes AI cloud providers, industrial customers and enterprise markets. Kress said AI cloud revenue more than tripled from a year earlier, as Nvidia helped rapidly expand AI computing capacity across more than 80 data centers with capacities of more than 10 megawatts.
Kress added that spending on AI infrastructure continues to accelerate, and demand for Nvidia’s computing systems remains strong. She also said Nvidia expects to generate $20 billion in CPU revenue this year.
Nvidia said its outlook does not assume any Data Center compute revenue from China, where U.S. export restrictions have limited sales of advanced AI chips.
Investors have closely watched Nvidia’s earnings for signs that spending on AI infrastructure remains strong despite growing questions about how quickly companies will turn those investments into profits.
So far, Nvidia’s results suggest demand continues to outpace expectations, which might be positive for data center providers.
Hester Peirce, a two-term commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), head of the agency’s crypto task force and known to many as “Crypto Mom,” will join the Regent University School of Law as faculty.
In a Tuesday notice from Regent University, the law school said that Peirce would join as an associate professor starting in November. Her term at the SEC officially expired in June 2025, but commissioners “may continue to serve up to approximately 18 months after terms expire if they are not replaced before then,” according to the agency.
She joined the SEC in January 2018, after her nomination by President Donald Trump and Senate confirmation in December 2017. She was confirmed for her second term in 2020. She was initially nominated by President Barack Obama for a Republican seat on the SEC in 2015, but the US Senate did not act on her nomination.
Peirce is expected to help the law school bolster its academic focus in several areas, including federal litigation, securities regulation and digital assets, according to the university.
Source: Hester Peirce
Peirce’s seat may not be filled immediately. Caroline Crenshaw, the agency’s previous Democratic commissioner, departed in January, 18 months after her term ended and no nominations to fill that seat have been made by President Trump. Peirce’s departure will leave only two Republican commissioners at the SEC: Mark Uyeda and Chair Paul Atkins.
Related: SEC rescinds defendant ‘gag rule’ when settling enforcement actions
Since Trump took office in January 2025, the SEC has radically changed its approach to crypto regulation and enforcement. The agency dropped several enforcement actions and investigations into crypto companies, including those tied to Trump and his family.
CFTC also faces raft of vacancies
Together, the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are the two most prominent federal financial regulators overseeing aspects of the crypto industry. Under Atkins and CFTC Chair Michael Selig, both Trump picks, the agencies said that they would coordinate on approaches to end what they called “regulatory turf wars.”
Source: Paul Atkins
However, with a digital asset market structure bill moving through Congress, many lawmakers are calling on Trump to nominate a bipartisan group of commissioners to fully staff the agencies.
Selig remains the sole CFTC commissioner and chair in a panel intended to be made up of five people, and with the impending departure of Peirce, the SEC will be down to two out of five commissioners. Trump had not announced any nominations to either agency as of Wednesday.
The market structure bill, the CLARITY Act, is expected to shift many of the responsibilities and authority regulating crypto markets from the SEC to CFTC.
Magazine: 5 tech predictions the mainstream media got horribly wrong
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order pushing US financial regulators and requesting action from the Federal Reserve to review whether fintech and crypto-linked firms should get broader access to core payment infrastructure. For Ripple, which has been seeking a Fed master account tied to its RLUSD stablecoin strategy, the order moves a long-running industry fight closer to the center of Washington’s financial policy agenda.
The May 19 order, titled “Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks,” frames the issue as one of competition and modernization. “The Federal Government must update regulations to allow integration of digital assets and innovative technology into traditional financial services and payment systems. The Federal Government must also remove overly burdensome and fragmented regulations and supervisory practices that form barriers to entry and primarily benefit incumbent financial services firms,” the order says.
The most important section for crypto firms is the part on Federal Reserve services. The order asks the Fed to evaluate the legal, regulatory and policy framework for access to Reserve Bank payment accounts and payment services by uninsured depository institutions and non-bank financial companies, including those engaged in digital assets. The Fed is requested to submit findings and recommendations within 120 days, including whether existing law allows expanded access and whether regional Reserve Banks can act independently when granting or denying applications.
What This Means For Ripple
For Ripple, the timing is notable. In July 2025, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the company had applied for a US national bank charter, while also seeking a Fed master account that would let it access Federal Reserve payment infrastructure and hold RLUSD reserves directly with the central bank. Ripple’s charter application was confirmed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, while the master account bid was positioned as part of the company’s broader stablecoin and payments strategy.
Ripple’s application is not occurring in isolation. Kraken Financial, the exchange’s Wyoming-chartered banking arm, announced in March that it had received a Federal Reserve master account, becoming the first digital asset bank in the US to gain direct access to the Fed’s payment infrastructure. Kraken said the approval followed more than five years of regulatory engagement and would allow direct connectivity to Fedwire without relying on intermediary banks.
That approval has become the template and warning sign for the rest of the sector. Kraken’s account is limited-purpose and initially granted for one year, giving it access to Fedwire and limited overnight balances, but not interest on reserves, emergency Fed lending, FedNow or ACH. Other firms seeking similar access include Ripple, Anchorage Digital and Wise.
Notably, the issue has already been tested in court. Custodia Bank, another Wyoming crypto-focused institution, applied for a master account in October 2020, sued the Fed in 2022 over delays, and saw its application denied in January 2023. In 2025 and 2026, appeals court decisions reinforced the view that Reserve Banks retain discretion to reject master account requests, a legal backdrop Trump’s order now explicitly asks the Fed to examine.
Ripple has also shown interest in a more limited route. In November, Ripple chief legal officer Stu Alderoty said the Fed’s “skinny” account concept was attractive despite restrictions, because it could still improve RLUSD reserve redeemability without granting the full benefits of a traditional master account.
The Fed had already opened that door before Trump’s order. In December, it requested public input on a special-purpose “payment account” for eligible institutions focused on payments innovation. The prototype would be distinct from a master account, would not pay interest, would not provide Fed credit, and would be subject to balance caps.
Ripple’s stablecoin push gives the master account question added weight. The company said in December that the OCC had conditionally approved Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised trust bank that would manage RLUSD reserves under both NYDFS and OCC oversight.
Overall, Trump’s order does not grant Ripple a master account. It does, however, force the policy question into a formal timeline: whether firms building crypto payment and stablecoin infrastructure should remain dependent on bank intermediaries, or gain direct, risk-limited access to the sovereign rails beneath dollar settlement.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.3647.
XRP bulls must break the 0.618 Fib, 1-week chart | Source: XRPUSDT on TradingView.com
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.
Bitcoin (BTC) demand on Coinbase points to early signs of market stabilization as BTC reclaimed the upper bounds of its range highs. The 14-day trend of the Coinbase Premium Index has remained in an uptrend, suggesting steady buyer interest despite traders taking $1.14 billion in profits, which pushed the daily Coinbase premium to a six-week low.
Coinbase demand stabilizes amid negative readings
The Coinbase Premium Index dropped to -0.087 on May 19, its weakest reading since March 31. A negative premium means Bitcoin traded at a lower price on Coinbase than on Binance, signaling softer demand from US-based buyers.
BTC profit-taking accelerated as it rallied to $82,000 and holders realized 14,600 BTC ($1.14 billion) in daily profits on May 4. CryptoQuant noted unrealized profit margins climbed to 17.7% on May 5, the highest level since June 2025.
Bitcoin net realized profit and loss. Source: CryptoQuant
However, the longer-term trend for Coinbase paints a steadier picture. The 14-day simple moving average (SMA) of the premium index has remained above its February lows. Similar recoveries in the moving average preceded renewed spot demand on Coinbase during March 2025, shortly before Bitcoin pushed toward $110,000 in April-May 2025.
The daily premium readings still sit below zero, though the rising SMA points to easing sell-side pressure. Bitcoin also continues to hold above the $70,000–$75,000 range, a zone that previously attracted strong spot accumulation.
Crypto analyst Amr Taha noted that activity across the Coinbase-linked network stayed elevated during the latest pullback. The Base blockchain revenue climbed to nearly $972,000 on May 19, exceeding late-March levels even as the Coinbase Premium Gap remained negative.
The divergence highlights steady network participation inside the Coinbase ecosystem while spot demand gradually rebuilds.
Daily blockchain total revenue by different protocols. Source: CryptoQuant
Related: This Bitcoin price model targets ‘conservative’ $255K by year-end
BTC price receives support from the key daily trend
The daily chart of BTC still leans bullish after the rejection near $82,000. The price continues to trade above the 100-day exponential moving average (EMA) near $76,800, which is acting as key dynamic support.
The current retracement has held within the $76,000–$77,000 fair-value gap, keeping buyers active near recent accumulation levels. A recovery from this zone could reopen the path toward $80,000–$82,000, while the larger supply area near $86,000–$90,000 sits higher.
$74,800 remains a key level and a daily close below that price would mark the first bearish break in the current higher-low formation and shift focus to the $70,000 psychological support level.
Futures data continues to support demand resilience. Market analyst CryptoOnChain reported that Bitcoin’s 30-day moving-average net taker volume dropped to $58 million on May 18 from $243 million in April. However, the metric remained positive during the recent correction, indicating that BTC futures buyers continued to absorb sell pressure near the current price.
BTC net taker volume. Source: CryptoQuant
Related: Bitcoin sees fresh US sell-off as markets await Nvidia ‘biggest earnings event’
Missouri is suing the company behind cryptocurrency ATM operator CoinFlip for “knowingly facilitating fraudulent transactions and profiting from them,” in the latest move by a US state authority targeting digital currency kiosks and ATMs.
In a Wednesday notice, the office of Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said the lawsuit against GPD Holdings, doing business as CoinFlip, was in response to incidents of fraud, including against the state’s “seniors and veterans.” The state began a probe in December into several crypto ATM companies, including Bitcoin Depot, which recently filed for bankruptcy.
Missouri lawsuit against CoinFlip. Source: Missouri AG
“The Attorney General’s Office is asking the Court to declare that CoinFlip’s practices violate the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act; to enjoin CoinFlip from operating in Missouri; to impose civil penalties of $1,000 per violation over the past five years (up to $1,826,000); and to award restitution to consumers,” said the AG’s office.
According to CoinFlip’s website, the company operates 136 crypto kiosks in Missouri, and 4,229 in the US.
In recent months, ATM operators like Bitcoin Depot, CoinFlip and others have been repeatedly targeted by US state authorities and municipalities which have passed laws and ordinances restricting or outright banning the technology.
Related: Minnesota to weigh ban on crypto kiosks after scam reports
Warning about fraud from May 2025. Source: CoinFlip
Cointelegraph reached out to CoinFlip for comment on the lawsuit but did not receive an immediate response.
Bitcoin Depot warned of lawsuits and regulations before filing for bankruptcy
In a May 12 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, crypto ATM operator Bitcoin Depot said “substantial doubt exists about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” The concerns over paying more than $20 in legal judgments in the fourth quarter of 2025 and “ongoing litigation matters” came just a few days before Bitcoin Depot filed for voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings in Texas.
Bitcoin Depot was one of the largest crypto ATM operators in North America, responsible for more than 9,000 kiosks globally.
Magazine: 5 tech predictions the mainstream media got horribly wrong
