Grosse Pointe Farms, a cozy little town just outside Detroit, hasn’t even got a single crypto ATM . Zero. Zip. Nada.
Yet this smart bunch just said, hold on, let’s not wait till these machines start popping up and causing all kinds of trouble.
So what’d they do? They slapped on some serious regulations on crypto ATMs, even though there aren’t any yet.
For their safety
The city council passed this ordinance unanimously to keep the local people safe from the kind of scams that have been creeping into nearby places like St. Clair Shores.
Why? ‘Cause some poor soul got swindled at a crypto ATM, and that’s the kind of trouble no one wants knocking on their door.
Michigan’s Attorney General, Dana Nessel, had already gone on record warning about these scams statewide, and the Detroit Free Press spilled the beans on how it’s a growing headache.
So what’s in this ordinance? Think of it as a fortress for your wallet.
First, if any crypto ATMs wanna set up shop here in Grosse Pointe Farms one day, they better register with the Department of Public Safety, snag a business license, and show clear warnings about scams and how crypto transactions aren’t reversible.
That’s right, no oops, forgot my password resets here.
Limits
But it doesn’t stop there. New users? They’re getting capped! Newbies face a $1,000 daily transaction limit and a $5,000 total limit for the first two weeks. After that, poof, the limits vanish.
City attorney Bill Burgess said it’s about giving people a little breathing room to learn the ropes before they start throwing around big bucks.
It’s like in the office when HR makes you shadow someone before letting you handle client calls solo.
Now, this isn’t just theory. Coinflip’s rep, that’s a Chicago-based crypto ATM operator, rolled through and shared a real story about stopping an elderly lady from making a big mistake.
They’ve been in Michigan since 2019 and got a proper money transmitter license last April, so they know the stakes.
They even toy with holding periods for first transactions to protect customers, because, like Burgess put it, the rookie phase is when the crooks strike hardest.
Without borders
And this ain’t just Michigan’s thing. States like Arizona, Nebraska, California, and Washington are cracking down on crypto ATMs hard this year too.
The sector is changing fast. So, in the poker game of crypto, Grosse Pointe Farms isn’t waiting to get dealt a bad hand.
They’re reshuffling the deck before the dealers even arrive, protecting their people from crypto cons, scams, and those irreversible oops moments. Now that’s boss-level thinking.
