This story originally appeared on the Kansas City Beacon. It is republished here with stable links to the interactive maps built for the piece.

Finance professor Jocelyn Evans first encountered a cryptocurrency ATM on the way to talk about financial education with students last fall.

Evans stopped at a gas station on her way to Sumner Academy in Kansas City, Kansas. She came across the machine with the word “BITCOIN” on the screen. Store staffers weren’t familiar with the machine, which didn’t provide much explanation about how cryptocurrencies work.

“It’s a low-income area with primarily Hispanic, African-American, people who are immigrants,” said Evans, the Henry W. Bloch endowed chair of finance and an associate dean at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “I just wondered how much people know about cryptocurrency and, with a standalone machine, how much people knew when they made transactions with these machines.”

The ATM that caught Evans’ attention is one of more than 100 cryptocurrency kiosks installed in gas stations, liquor stores, smoke shops and elsewhere across the Kansas City area in the last few years.

The companies running the machines argue they’re providing communities an alternative to traditional financial institutions that have historically given worse deals to poorer neighborhoods and communities of color.

But critics call the machines a targeted attempt to exploit financially vulnerable people with steep fees for a volatile product that’s difficult to cash out from.

“This is no different than people who target the Black community for payday loans or subprime loans,” Evans said. “They’re targeting people with the least financial knowledge and understanding of how you invest in cryptocurrencies.”

Crypto ATMs are more prevalent in areas with more Black residents, particularly along Troost Avenue in Kansas City

https://danmika.github.io/CryptoATMsKC/KC_Crypto_Black_Pop.html

Source: CoinATMRadar.com, U.S. Census • Graphic by: Dan Mika/The Beacon

Crypto ATMs are more common in neighborhoods with more Hispanic residents, particularly in Kansas City, Kansas

https://danmika.github.io/CryptoATMsKC/KC_Crypto_Hispanic_Pop.html

Source: CoinATMRadar.com, U.S. Census • Graphic by: Dan Mika/The Beacon

Cryptocurrency machines tend to be placed in and around neighborhoods with larger numbers of Black and Latino residents, and in areas with lower median household incomes, according to a Beacon analysis comparing ATM locations provided by CoinATMRadar against recent estimates from the U.S. Census.

Research from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shows those populations are more likely to lack bank accounts — or to use nontraditional financial services like payday loans or title loan services that often carry steep fees.

More crypto ATMs are clustered in lower-income areas than in wealthier neighborhoods

https://danmika.github.io/CryptoATMsKC/KC_Crypto_Income_Map.html

Source: CoinATMRadar.com, U.S. Census • Graphic by: Dan Mika/The Beacon

Crypto ATMs promise access to the world of cryptocurrency to financially disadvantaged groups. However, they often charge fees far above industry standards and sometimes offer little explanation of the risks inherent in crypto. All of these ATMs will accept cash to buy crypto, but most aren’t equipped to sell crypto and dispense cash.