Its quite surprising how far, and wide the ATMs have reached around the world. I've some some in foreign countries, as well as being in my home country. I'm never really seen the need to use one, over other more traditional ways, especially if you were to consider tampering, which occasionally can occur with non cryptocurrency ATMs. Personally, I prefer to purchase from an exchange, but I'm curious in this day, and age what would be the benefit for a cryptocurrency ATM other than being a gimmick?
You are not wrong about this, some people will prefer to make use of exchanges, while some people will even like p2p exchanges, while some will go a bit further for privacy reasons to make use of noncustododial exchanges like bsiq. But the rise of crypto ATMs are increasing, this is because people see it useful, I noticed these ATMs are very close to or within big stores, malls, super markets and the likes. In this case, many people see it useful to buy from the stores while using crypto ATM for payment are accepted, many buyers will not hesitate to make use of it in this case.
The ATM would themselves add a markup, very much like traditional exchanges, these days everyone offering a service usually requires KYC, and therefore that eliminates the privacy aspect that these provided once upon a time, and by using a ATM you are publicly advertising that you are into Bitcoin, and with the recent surges in Bitcoin, one might become a higher priority target than traditional ATM users.
You are also right about this, crypto ATMs terms of services differ, but I too noticed they are moving towards ways individual identities can be easily known, but I have come to think the company providing such services have a mobile number, email or other ways to get in touch to know about their terms of service, some people will first do that to know if to use it or not. Some will not require for anything related to kyc (but I doubt that these days), some will not require for anything other than phone number while buying and selling less than $2000 but it depends on terms of service. Although, giving out phone number can likely compromise privacy, and I have never heard of recent ATMs that will not demand for phone number at certain point either for buying and selling, but these TOS are important because very possible there are some crypto ATM that might still provide the privacy.
There's also the fact that these ATMs are usually situated in cities, and therefore require traveling to get to for a lot of people which either adds to the costs, or simply as it was in your case; adds some muscle. I would be particularly interested in seeing the statistics of how often these devices are used, since I simply can't see them being viable for most users, or at least not very convenient.
There are alternatives like you have once mentioned, if someone is not located where crypto ATM is, he/she can still make use of other methods while p2p is available everywhere and easily accessible online, this will be the forgo of those not having crypto ATM nearby, but some users do make sure of it while shopping in stores. People making use of crypto ATM are people that have close access to it while other alternatives are there like you mentioned and I think p2p is just my best way. But crypto ATM is one of the ways more people are knowing bitcoin and the number is increasing because people in the nearest location to it are using it, I think more probably for shopper in stores.
