Bitcoin Depot filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 18, 2026, shutting its entire network of over 9,000 ATMs across North America. The Nasdaq-listed company said in a press release it would pursue an orderly wind-down and sale of assets under supervision of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.
The timing did not go unnoticed.
The Investigator Who Saw It Coming
Weeks before the company’s own executives acknowledged the depth of the crisis, blockchain investigator ZachXBT had already published findings that painted a damaging picture of Bitcoin Depot’s internal operations. On April 22, 2026, ZachXBT posted on X exposing what he described as a three-day gap between when the exploit occurred and when Bitcoin Depot reported it to regulators.
As ZachXBT posted on X: “Interesting timing. I recently exposed Bitcoin Depot for a 3 day time gap in reporting a $3.6M exploit and highlighted how its Bitcoin ATM business depends on predatory practices via user fraud.”
The exploit had drained $3.6 million from the company’s systems. According to ZachXBT’s Telegram channel, Investigations by ZachXBT, the on-chain trail showed 0.23230692 BTC leaving a wallet labeled BitcoinDepot on April 21, 2026 at 1:45 AM, passing through multiple theft addresses before consolidating and being bridged out via USDT transfers to external wallets by March 20, 2026 at 5:28 AM.
ZachXBT had manually traced 19 high-confidence theft addresses from March 20. The company’s April 6 SEC 8-K filing acknowledged an incident on March 23, 2026. That three-day discrepancy is what drew his attention first.
A Receipt That Tells the Whole Story
Before the bankruptcy news, ZachXBT had flagged something more direct: a transaction receipt showing an elderly fraud victim had purchased 0.23230692 BTC at a Bitcoin Depot ATM for $25,000 cash, while the machine quoted a Bitcoin price of $108,000. The actual market price at the time was around $75,000.
The victim received Bitcoin with a real market value of roughly $17,500 after paying $25,000. That is a $7,500 gap on a single transaction.
As ZachXBT posted on X: “I strongly advise no one to ever give Bitcoin Depot ATMs your business. Why was an elderly fraud victim recently allowed to convert $25K fiat to BTC via Bitcoin Depot ATM in the US? Why was the victim quoted at $108K per BTC when market price is $75K? That’s $25K total cost for 0.232 BTC when it had a real value of $17.5K. You better be planning to return the $7.5K profit.”
The theft wallet address in that post, bc1qpk2fm3e5fyc4hk3xrvkawrsdtymf_fdp6xmgtda, matches the BTC address printed on the ATM receipt. Just weeks later, Bitcoin Depot was publicly promoting its ATM network on social media. The company’s official X account posted: “Need to buy Bitcoin with cash now? Skip the exchange. Walk up to any of our 9,000+ Bitcoin ATMs and turn cash into crypto fast.”
That post came before the ZachXBT expose. The machines are now offline.
The Numbers Before the Filing
Bitcoin Depot reported preliminary Q1 2026 revenue of $83.5 million, a 49.2% drop year-over-year, per the company’s own disclosures. The $9.5 million net loss in Q1 2026 compared sharply against $12.2 million net income in the same quarter a year prior. The company’s stock had already fallen 79.48% in the six months before the bankruptcy announcement.
CEO Alex Holmes, who took the role in March 2026 after Connecticut suspended the company’s money transmission license, blamed regulatory headwinds in the official statement.
Holmes said the company had worked to strengthen fraud prevention over time, including enhanced identity verification and lower transaction limits for customers, but added that state-level compliance obligations had become increasingly difficult to absorb.
The company listed assets and liabilities both in the range of $10 million to $50 million in the bankruptcy filing, per MarketScreener. Vinson and Elkins LLP is serving as legal counsel. Portage Point Partners is handling restructuring advisory.
Who Gets Hit
Cash-dependent users in the U.S., particularly those without bank accounts who relied on Bitcoin Depot’s kiosks as their only crypto entry point, are left without access now that the network has gone offline. Bitcoin Depot had operated across 47 states, with its BDCheckout product extending to retail locations in 31 states.
The attorneys general of Massachusetts and Iowa had filed suit against the company over alleged facilitation of crypto scams, according to public records. Crypto ATM fraud losses hit $389 million in reported consumer losses in 2025, up 58% from the year before, according to figures cited in broader industry coverage.
Bitcoin Depot’s Canadian entities are part of the U.S. court-supervised process, with restructuring proceedings expected to begin there separately. Other international subsidiaries are winding down under local laws.
