Texas tops $57M crypto kiosk hit list; lawmakers eye joining the ban club 🛑

Texans lost $56.8 million to cryptocurrency kiosks in 2025, more than any other state, according to FBI figures presented Thursday to a Texas House committee. The state accounted for 1,179 of the 13,460 complaints the bureau logged nationally last year, when reported losses to the machines rose 58% to $389 million. The kiosks, which convert cash to crypto, sit in gas stations and convenience stores, and the Texas Tribune counts about 4,000 across the state.

Scammers typically persuade victims to withdraw money from their bank accounts and feed it into a machine. "In my career, I've never seen a more efficient, cleaner way to steal money," Rep. AJ Louderback told the House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety and Veterans' Affairs, which had gathered for invited testimony on foreign financial influence before turning to crypto. Kelley Currie, an Atlantic Council fellow, told the committee that Interpol now treats scamming as an industry comparable to drug and human trafficking, and went further, saying the kiosks in gas stations "are run by Chinese money launderers." The Justice Department has charged Chinese nationals over crypto fraud compounds in Southeast Asia and prosecuted Chinese money laundering networks moving scam proceeds, but has not said those groups generally operate kiosks.

Jesse Saucillo, deputy commissioner at the Texas Department of Banking, said recovery is close to impossible once the money moves. Funds typically go to an unhosted wallet, he said, which then "gets into a mixer" and beyond, leaving it "very hard to get any of that back." AI-generated impersonation of police and state agencies is making the approach calls more convincing, he added.

Some 30 states have enacted legislation relating to crypto kiosks since 2023, according to AARP. South Dakota caps transactions at $1,000 a day and $10,000 a month and requires full refunds for fraud victims, and Wisconsin and Virginia have similar caps. Maine's regulator secured a $1.9 million settlement from Bitcoin Depot to reimburse victims. Indiana banned the machines outright in March, the first state to do so, under a law that lets the attorney general sue both operators and the shops hosting them; nearly 900 kiosks were running there when the governor signed it. Tennessee and Minnesota have since followed, with Tennessee making ownership or operation a criminal offense under House Bill 2505, which Governor Bill Lee signed on April 13, giving operators until July 1 to pull the plug.

Committee chair Rep. Cole Hefner said Texas would look at "doing more than regulating them," and hinted at a bill. "I got a pretty good idea coming down," he told colleagues.