I just paid a 22% fee to buy btc on a btc atm. Tx fee was only 0.18%.

Fee so high seems like a cash grab. Are operators in trouble? Are they suffering in this bear market so much that have to hike those fees up just to survive? A recent article from blooomberg suggests so:

Coin Cloud, which runs about 5,000 ATMs across the US and Brazil, has tapped advisers to help it rework about $125 million of debt accumulated to fund an aggressive expansion, Bloomberg News reported in November. The company has been seeking additional funding from troubled crypto brokerage Genesis, people familiar with the matter said.

and

Bitcoin Depot owed $42.4 million under a term loan bearing a 15% interest rate as of June 30, according to a proxy statement.

source