Australia’s financial-crime regulator has ordered the country’s largest crypto ATM operator offline, shutting 96 machines for three months.
The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, known as AUSTRAC, said on Monday it had suspended Cryptolink Pty Ltd’s registration as a virtual asset service provider with effect from 9 August. The suspension runs until 9 November.
A virtual asset service provider is any business that moves digital assets on behalf of customers. Under Australian anti-money-laundering law it has to report certain activity to the government, including threshold transaction reports covering cash movements above a set limit.
What Cryptolink Failed to Do
AUSTRAC said the company fell down on exactly those reports, and then did not respond when the regulator asked for information.
‘Cryptolink met the conditions stipulated in its enforceable undertaking, but subsequently failed to meet basic reporting obligations, particularly for threshold transaction reports,’ AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas said. The regulator, he added, ‘deemed it too high risk to continue operating at present.’
The reference to an enforceable undertaking matters, because this is not Cryptolink’s first contact with the regulator. AUSTRAC accepted an undertaking from the company in October 2025, after its Cryptocurrency Taskforce found alleged late reporting and weak risk assessments, and Cryptolink paid a $56,340 fine. It met the terms of that agreement and was suspended anyway, less than a year later, for missing the underlying obligations the agreement was meant to fix.
Why Regulators Watch These Machines
Crypto ATMs occupy a specific place in the fraud landscape, which is why they attract attention out of proportion to their size.
They convert cash into crypto in a single step, in person, with very little friction. That makes them useful to anyone moving money without a bank in the loop, and it makes them the endpoint scammers direct victims towards, because a transfer made at a machine is fast and effectively irreversible.
Australia now has more crypto ATMs than anywhere else in the Asia Pacific region, around 1,800 machines against 23 in 2019. The Australian Federal Police puts the amount moving through them at roughly $275 million a year. Operators have themselves described the sector as having become ‘a safe haven for bad actors.’
What Has Not Happened Yet
The suspension is narrower than it might appear. Ninety-six machines is the largest single network in the country, but it sits against a national total of roughly 1,800, which says something about how fragmented the market is. The order is also temporary, and Cryptolink can operate again from 9 November.
The broader powers are still only proposed. Australia’s Home Affairs Minister has suggested giving AUSTRAC authority to control or prohibit products it considers high risk, crypto ATMs among them, but that remains a proposal rather than law. What exists today is a taskforce that has been engaging operators since late 2024 and a regulator willing to switch one of them off.
Thomas said AUSTRAC would ‘continue to keep a close watch on the cryptocurrency sector, particularly businesses operating crypto ATMs, and will take action where we identify serious risks or non-compliance.’
