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2026-06-16 17:45:55 UTC

BTC Map on Nostr: May blog just dropped! 204 net new merchants, US leading activity, MapLibre switch, ...

May blog just dropped!

204 net new merchants, US leading activity, MapLibre switch, and prep for Nostr auth.

Sorry (not sorry) for the delay. 🙃
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Global Metrics 🌍️

  • Total Bitcoin-accepting merchants: 25,470 -> 25,674 (+204 +0.8%)
  • Total Bitcoin-accepting places: 27,646 -> 27,921 (+275 +1.0%)
  • Recently verified (1y): 16,401 -> 16,564 (+163 +1.0%)
  • Avg. days since last verification: 386 -> 393 (+7 +1.8%)
  • Merchants boosted: 20 -> 12 (-8 -40.0%)
  • Total boost duration: 1,570 -> 600 (-970 -61.8%) days
  • Comments posted: 52 -> 30 (-22 -42.3%)

Graph showing merchant adoption over the last month

Graph showing merchant adoption over the previous 3 months

The mid-month dip reflects the removal of the remaining Qerko locations (642 Czech-based merchants that stopped accepting Bitcoin), which continued into May. That cleanup is why pepakriz topped the leaderboard this month 🙃.

Find current stats over at the BTC Map Dashboard.

Note: the charts above track merchant growth only. The total places metric includes merchants plus exchanges/ATMs.

Country Activity 📈

Here are this month's most active countries in terms of merchant data editing.

Name Total Created Updated Deleted Comments
🇺🇸 United States of America 616 522 77 17 2
🇧🇷 Brazil 37 4 29 4 0
🇸🇻 El Salvador 35 1 22 12 0
🇨🇷 Costa Rica 32 2 29 1 0
🇮🇹 Italy 27 2 21 4 0
🇩🇪 Germany 25 2 18 5 1
🇨🇿 Czechia 24 1 22 1 1
🇳🇿 New Zealand 24 0 21 3 0
🇨🇭 Switzerland 23 5 16 2 0
🇬🇧 United Kingdom 16 1 14 1 3

Community Activity 📈

Here are this month's most active communities in terms of merchant data editing.

Name Total Created Updated Deleted Comments
🇸🇻 Bitcoin Coast 42 2 28 12 0
🇺🇸 BitPlebs Los Angeles 36 25 11 0 0
🇹🇴 NZBitcoiners.org 32 0 29 3 0
🇨🇷 Bitcoin Jungle 30 1 28 1 0
🇺🇸 Bay Area Bitcoiners 16 13 3 0 0
🇺🇸 Colorado Bitcoin 13 13 0 0 0
🇨🇿 Dvacet Jedna Praha 12 0 11 1 1

New Communities 🫂

We welcomed the following new communities over the past month:

Active Taggers 🏆

Here are this month's most active contributors adding and updating merchant data on BTC Map.

📣 Shoutout to the top 3:

  • 🥇 pepakriz with 711 edits (removing the last of the Qerko locations 😢)
  • 🥈 Rockedf with 501 edits
  • 🥉 RoseBTCmap with 490 edits
Name Total Edits Created Updated Deleted
pepakriz 711 0 0 711
Rockedf 501 470 27 4
RoseBTCmap 490 445 42 3
Comino 193 29 143 21
SherbetS 116 63 53 0
bitcoincoast_sv 48 2 33 13
confusedbuffalo 34 0 34 0
TheSwavu 26 0 26 0
BTCGVA 20 5 11 4
Mind09 19 5 9 5
Satoshi Team 18 18 0 0
mueschel 13 3 9 1
Bitcoin Amantikir 12 3 6 3

Find current and historical stats on the Tagger Leaderboard.

Web App 🕸️

May brought a quieter but still solid month to the Web App, with the headline being the switch to MapLibre Native for the map layer.

  • MapLibre Native replaced the Leaflet-based map stack, bringing better performance, smoother rendering, and a path to native-level map experiences in the browser.
  • Italian translation was contributed by darthmassari, making BTC Map more accessible to the Italian-speaking community.
  • Blitz Wallet was added to the Apps page.
  • Merchant OG images now serve correctly when sharing merchant links via ?merchant= URL parameter.
  • 5 legacy basemaps were restored following the map library migration.

Infrastructure ⚙️

The API saw significant work this month, much of it laying groundwork for identity and import improvements.

  • Nostr auth via NIP-98 was implemented with a new /v4/auth/nostr REST endpoint, npub-scoped user provisioning, and atomic create-or-recover flows.
  • Place issues REST endpoint added, allowing fetching place issues by ID.
  • Multi-vendor place imports were enabled with vendor-scoped issue labels and a new BTCPay Server import vendor.
  • New analytical RPCs were added and existing ones documented, including daily infra reports with top user agents.
  • Ansible progress was made on formalizing server setup, and API log retention was automated to 30 days for privacy and disk space.

Android App 🤖

  • Wiki URLs were migrated from gitea to wiki.btcmap.org.
  • Update checker logic was extracted to a standalone component with added tests.
  • Back button and gesture handling were improved.
  • Shared mutable state issues that caused occasional bugs were cleaned up.

Credits 🫶

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the project this month, including the Shadowy Supertaggers:

  • Hannes / escapedcat - major web app contributions across MapLibre, components, i18n, and infrastructure.
  • Igor Bubelov - API Nostr auth, place issues endpoint, import pipeline, Ansible, and Android maintenance.
  • Nathan / dadofsambonzuki - web app apps page, LNURLp forwards, OG images, about-us page, wiki URLs, API contributions, and admin tooling.
  • Edwin Comino / LighthouseFR - API icon improvements and LNURLp configuration.
  • Davi de Sa Luquini - web app merchant tag issues fix.
  • Marco / darthmassari - Italian translation.
  • pepakriz, Rockedf, RoseBTCmap, Comino, and all the active taggers listed above.

Analytics 📊

Our May website stats are as follows:

Graph showing website analytics over the last month

Check out the BTC Map Analytics Dashboard. Track our growth and see where users are coming from in real time.

Support Us 🤝

There are many ways in which you can support us:

  • Become a Shadowy Supertagger and help maintain your local area or pitch in with the never-ending global effort.
  • Help improve or maintain our code. Check out our GitHub Team and hop into our Matrix Space.
  • Consider donating to the project here.
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