Hawaii will become the fourth US state to fully prohibit cryptocurrency ATMs when its new law takes effect on October 1. Governor Josh Green signed House Bill 1642 in July after it cleared the state legislature in May, making it Act 224 and putting Hawaii alongside Minnesota, Tennessee and Indiana as the only states with a complete kiosk ban.
The law bars the ownership, operation or management of any digital financial asset transaction kiosk that accepts US currency from a customer in exchange for a digital asset, effectively shutting down the cash-to-crypto side of the business while leaving crypto-to-cash withdrawals untouched. As of August, 57 crypto ATMs and kiosks were operating across Hawaii's four main islands.
Scam losses drove the legislation
Hawaii's Office of Consumer Protection cited 826 complaints from state residents in 2025 tied to digital-asset kiosks, with losses estimated at roughly $80 million. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported Americans lost more than $11 billion to digital-asset scams in 2025 alone, and crypto ATMs have become a preferred final step for scammers who direct victims to deposit cash into a kiosk before it's converted and moved out of reach. The prohibition itself is spelled out in the text of House Bill 1642, which targets any kiosk that accepts US currency in exchange for a digital financial asset.
The burden of those losses falls unevenly. According to FBI data, victims aged 60 and older accounted for 86% of reported losses in cases where a victim's age was known, and the FTC has separately flagged that older consumers make up a disproportionate share of Bitcoin ATM fraud complaints nationally — a pattern advocacy groups like AARP have cited in pushing for kiosk restrictions in multiple states.
Part of a broader state-by-state crackdown
Indiana was the first state to enact a full ban, in March, followed by Tennessee in July and Minnesota in August. Several other states — including Wisconsin, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia — have opted for lighter-touch restrictions such as daily transaction caps and mandatory refund windows for scam victims rather than outright prohibition. Hawaii's law goes further than most of those middle-ground approaches, closing the cash-deposit channel entirely rather than capping it.
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Industry opponents have argued the restrictions penalize legitimate users, including unbanked residents who rely on kiosks as an on-ramp, and some lobbied for a veto on those grounds. With Act 224 now signed, Hawaii's roughly 57 operating kiosks have until the end of September to wind down cash transactions before the ban takes hold.
