Crypto’s Brutal Downturn Has Finally Caught Up With Bitcoin ATMs

Amherst County, Virginia, doesn’t have a hospital. It does have a Bitcoin ATM.

It’s inside the Dogwood Express Market, a convenience store just down the road from the local used-car dealership. The machine lets people buy, receive and send Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency.

Whether they choose to do so, however, is another matter. “I’ve never seen anybody even use it,” Chrissy Scruggs, a 27-year-old employee at the Dogwood Express, said in October.

Since the first Bitcoin ATM was installed almost a decade ago, the number of machines proliferated, impervious to cryptocurrencies’ boom-and-bust cycles. From the bustling streets of New ...