BTC Map Annual Review 2024

Preface#

2024 was the second full year BTC Map. The first attempts to build a map of Bitcoin merchants were observed more than a decade ago, but the first wave or merchant adoption faded away due to on-chain settlement limitations. Late 2022 was the year when Lightning started to shine and it felt like Bitcoin was ready for retail adoption. It turned out we weren't wrong about that! BTC Map continues to have a steady growth rates, powered by the mighty Lightning Network.

Global Metrics: Total Merchant Count#

The total number of bitcoin accepting merchants is 40% higher than it was in the beginning of 2024. We started this year with 9,727 merchants on the map, and we increased this to 13,673 merchants by the end of 2024.

Global Metrics: Up-to-date Merchant Count#

We care deeply about data quality and so every merchant is supposed to be re-verified at least once a year. The number of freshly verified merchants has increased from 6,250 to 7,807, which is 25% higher than it was in the beginning of 2024.

We're aiming to re-verify the other 5,866 merchants, but we can only do that if we get some help from the local communities. After all, the data is theirs (yours!), not ours. The best way to help us is to re-verify some outdated locations in your area.

Trending Countries#

1. Brazil - 1,873 changes
2. United States - 1,745 changes
3. Czechia - 1,644 changes
4. Italy - 1,567 changes
5. El Salvador - 1,043 changes
6. Netherlands - 985 changes
7. Germany - 685 changes
8. South Africa - 740 changes
9. Portugal - 580 changes
10. Georgia - 648 changes

I want to give a huge thanks to Rockedf for consistently contributing to almost every region!

Trending Communities#

1. Jednadvacet Praha - 682 changes
2. Bitcoin Association Switzerland - 566 changes
3. Mi Primer Bitcoin - 414 changes
4. FREE Madeira - 350 changes
5. Vancouver Bitcoiners - 319 changes
6. Bitcoin Bulgaria - 272 changes
7. Arnhem Bitcoin City - 258 changes
8. Bitcoin é aqui! Rolante/Riozinho-RS-BRASIL - 261 changes
9. Bitcoin Island Philippines - 205 changes
10. Porto Alegre Bitcoin - 210 changes

Key Goals for 2025#

• Re-verify more merchants (we need your help!)
• Finish community admin app and onboard more local admins (Nathan is working on that)
• Clean up our community database, remove the stale records and make sure none of our communities are shitcoining (we're hoping that the local admins will help us with that)
• Improve Android app by switching to vector tiles and fixing some UI and performance issues (Igor is working on that)
• Find someone to maintain our Web and iOS apps (if you're a dev, we need you help!)
• Automate merchant review process
• Implement more lightweight web interface for the users who doesn't need local caches and offline mode. It should be powered by a special API optimized for this use case (I'll probably work on that, but any help would be appreciated)
• Improve backend performance and fix some known bugs and bottlenecks
• Visit more places and spend more sats on BTC Map =) (we'll keep doing that and we need your help!)

Conclusion#

We're satisfied with our performance in 2024, and think the future looks bright. We're pleased to see more local communities spawning and the growing public awareness. Some popular Lightning wallets have also integrated BTC Map and we expect more to follow their lead. As Lightning Network continues to mature, it also gets much easier for merchants to accept sats. We expect a healthy growth rate in 2025!