State politicians aim to completely outlaw Bitcoin kiosks due to the increasing number of scams targeting the elderly. Minnesota lawmakers, local police, and the Department of Commerce have all worked together to pass a bill that would make it illegal for crypto ATMs to be used in the state. This initiative is in response to a lot of fraud and financial exploitation, especially of the elderly.
In response to 70 official accusations of financial fraud totalling over $540,000 in 2025, Rep. Erin Koegel’s bill HF3642 would make it illegal to utilise virtual currency kiosks, or “crypto ATMs,” that also take cash and debit cards.
The law came about because of one event in which police officers went to a cryptocurrency kiosk at a petrol station after getting a call about an elderly person who seemed confused. After looking into it more, authorities found out that she had been sending 50 percent of her monthly salary to scammers, which almost made her have to live in her car.
Police said that scammers often go for older people, using fake names and emotional stories to convince them to give over their pensions or retirement savings.
Industry pushback and refund dispute
It’s straightforward to see why scammers like cryptocurrencies: turning digital money into cryptocurrency makes it almost impossible for police to track down the money and make an arrest. Cryptocurrency platforms, on the other hand, are against the prohibition because they think it’s unjust.
Larry Lipka, an in-house lawyer for the digital currency site CoinFlip, agrees that there is an issue but doesn’t support the proposed law. The scammers are actively monitoring the situation. “They’re terrible, and they’re stealing from Americans,” he told Gizmodo. Then he said that their current safety measures, which include transaction restrictions and a holding time, were enough to keep people secure. “I know these tools work because we have 8,000 customers in the state and 12,000 transactions that happened in the last year, and less than 1% of those were refunded by customers.”
But the Commerce Department doesn’t agree. Sam Smith, the Department of Commerce’s head of government relations, says that just 48% of consumer complaints led to a refund and that those refunds were only 16% of the overall fraud amount. This indicates the need for additional laws.
There are about 350 licensed Bitcoin kiosks in Minnesota right now, but the legal precedent this measure sets might affect digital currency companies all throughout the US.