Wales crypto market data

What the numbers actually say

Data pages usually stop at the tables. It is worth spending a moment on what the figures mean together, because three or four of them tell a coherent story that none tells alone.

Crypto ownership is falling, not rising

The FCA's consumer research recorded UK adult cryptoasset ownership at roughly 8% in 2025, down from around 12% the year before — a fall from something like 7 million holders to about 4.5 million. Awareness stayed high at around 91%, and the mean holding among those who remained rose to approximately £1,842.

That combination is informative. Fewer people, holding more each. It is the signature of a market where casual participants have left and committed ones have stayed, which is roughly what you would expect after a difficult period followed by consolidation. Notably, around 26% of non-users said they would be more likely to invest if the market were regulated — a figure that matters a great deal given what arrives in October 2027.

The cash story is the Welsh story

Bank and building society branches in Wales fell from roughly 695 in 2012 to about 435 by 2022, with further closures since including 49 Lloyds group sites running into late 2026. Around 200,000 Welsh residents are described as reliant on cash, roughly 78% of Welsh adults use it at least weekly, and deprived areas have lost free-to-use machines faster than affluent ones.

Set that against zero lawful crypto ATMs and you have the central tension of this site. The population most likely to want a cash-based route into digital assets is the population the banking system has been withdrawing from, and the product built for them could not be operated lawfully.

Fraud is concentrated where advice is scarce

Across the four Welsh forces, 2023-24 produced 10,013 fraud reports and roughly £6.6 million in recorded losses. South Wales carried the highest volume at 4,091 reports, but the more striking figure is Dyfed-Powys: 1,886 reports and around £1.5 million lost, slightly more money than North Wales lost across 342 more reports. Losses per report are highest in the most rural force area.

Add North Wales Police's separate estimate that crypto scams alone cost their area around £6 million over three years, and a pattern emerges that our fraud page explores: isolation is a risk factor, and the removal of branch counters removed a checkpoint that used to interrupt bad decisions.

Our own methodology

The crypto ATM figures are our work rather than anyone else's, so the method should be transparent.

We selected 26 Welsh towns and cities spanning every region and a range of population sizes, from Cardiff at around 381,500 down to Brecon at roughly 8,000. For each, we checked public crypto ATM tracking services for current listings, searched for historic listings and local reporting of installations, and recorded whether any machine could be verified as currently operating.

We classify each location as "none found", "historically listed" or "unverified". We found zero verified operating machines. Two locations — Cardiff and Newport — carried historic listings. We do not claim the audit is exhaustive: a machine could exist in a premises that has never appeared on any tracker. We do claim that if a functioning consumer-facing network existed in Wales, this method would have found traces of it.

The legal position is independent of the audit. No UK crypto ATM operator holds FCA registration, so any machine anywhere in Wales would be operating outside the Money Laundering Regulations regardless of whether we found it. The full audit is on the crypto ATM page.

How we maintain this

We revisit the page when a source publishes a new figure or when something material changes, rather than on a fixed schedule. The date at the top reflects the last substantive review. Series like police fraud data and branch counts are published annually or less often, so the most recent available figure is sometimes a year or two old — each row carries its own period so you can judge.

If you spot an error or have a better source for something here, we would genuinely like to know. Details on the contact page.