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BTC Map - January 2026 Update

1.2k new merchants, 1M views, improved search, on-boarding flow and latest stats.

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Global Metrics 🌍️

  • Total Bitcoin-accepting places: 21,823 → 23,088 (+1,265 +5.8%)
  • Recently verified (1y): 11,874 → 12,746 (+872 +7.3%)
  • Avg. days since last verification: 392 → 393 (+1 +0.3%)
  • Merchants boosted: 8 → 20 (+12 +150.0%)
  • Total boost duration: 635 → 2,240 (+1,605 +252.8%) days
  • Comments posted: 32 → 40 (+8 +25.0%)

Graph showing merchant adoption over the last month

Find current stats over at the 👉 BTC Map Dashboard.

Country Activity 📈

Here are this month's most active countries in terms of merchant data editing. Square merchants continue to dominate in the USA 🇺🇸.

| Name | Total | Created | Updated | Deleted | Comments | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |🇺🇸 United States of America | 1050 | 878 | 159 | 13 | 7 | |🇧🇷 Brazil | 143 | 71 | 65 | 7 | 2 | |🇨🇦 Canada | 90 | 40 | 49 | 1 | 0 | |🇹🇭 Thailand | 77 | 28 | 45 | 4 | 5 | |🇨🇭 Switzerland | 70 | 1 | 63 | 6 | 2 | |🇸🇻 El Salvador | 58 | 10 | 45 | 3 | 0 | |🇪🇸 Spain | 46 | 5 | 36 | 5 | 1 | |🇿🇦 South Africa | 42 | 11 | 29 | 2 | 0 | |🇲🇽 Mexico | 31 | 6 | 16 | 9 | 2 | |🇵🇹 Portugal | 30 | 5 | 21 | 4 | 3 |

Community Activity 📈

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

| Name | Total | Created | Updated | Deleted | Comments | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |🇨🇭 Lugano Plan B | 57 | 0 | 52 | 5 | 0 | |🇨🇦 Vancouver Bitcoiners | 47 | 4 | 43 | 0 | 0 | |🇺🇸 Bay Area Bitcoiners | 38 | 30 | 8 | 0 | 1 | |🇸🇻 Bitcoin Coast | 30 | 1 | 24 | 5 | 1 | |🇺🇸 BitPlebs Los Angeles | 28 | 19 | 9 | 0 | 0 | |🇧🇬 Bitcoin Bulgaria | 25 | 1 | 24 | 0 | 0 | |🇲🇽 BTC Isla | 24 | 3 | 15 | 6 | 3 |

New Communities 🫂

We welcomed the following new communities over the past month:

We now have 648+ Communities scattered across the planet. 🌎️

Active Taggers 🏆

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

📣 Shoutout to the top 3:

  • 🥇 Rockedf with 646 edits
  • 🥈 RoseBTCmap with 455 edits
  • 🥉 Comino with 233 edits

| Name | Total Edits | Created | Updated | Deleted | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Rockedf | 646 | 541 | 102 | 3 | | RoseBTCmap | 455 | 440 | 14 | 1 | | Comino | 233 | 89 | 129 | 15 | | descubrebitcoin | 137 | 55 | 71 | 11 | | Beinardus | 88 | 53 | 35 | 0 | | Bitcoin Diary | 41 | 4 | 2 | 35 | | Nathan Giovannini | 39 | 0 | 34 | 5 | | Dimitar155 | 32 | 0 | 32 | 0 | | bitcoincoast_sv | 31 | 1 | 24 | 6 | | Mind09 | 31 | 15 | 14 | 2 | | emiliomorles | 24 | 4 | 19 | 1 | | Enfant72 | 15 | 5 | 10 | 0 | | paulbrunner | 15 | 0 | 15 | 0 | | Liongrass | 15 | 0 | 11 | 4 |

Find current and historical stats on the Tagger Leaderboard.

Web App 🕸️

With 26 PRs merged in January, the Web App continues to evolve. Notable changes this month:

  • Google Maps-Style Search with overlay panel (#608) - Enhanced search experience with an intuitive overlay interface
  • Tagger Onboarding Form (#584) - New streamlined onboarding flow for taggers joining the platform
  • Verified Date Display (#641) - Locations now show when they were last verified
  • IP Geolocation - Map now automatically centers based on user's IP location for a better initial experience
  • Analytics Link in Footer (#617) - Easy access to site statistics from every page

Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed dark mode data source select styling (#628)
  • Fixed broken marker icons in production (#626)
  • Fixed deleted merchants appearing in drawer (#621)
  • Fixed comment modal closing when clicking backdrop (#620) by keshav0479
  • Fixed areas loading indicators (#651)
  • Upgraded Areas API to v3 for better handling of deleted areas (#625)

Maintenance:

  • Removed 31 unused icon files reducing bundle size (#627)
  • Combined MerchantButton and MerchantLink components (#661) by kanishka0411
  • Disabled Gitea Issues API with maintenance message (#649)

Admin App 🛠️

Nathan made 54 commits to the Admin App this month, introducing powerful new tools for area management and data quality:

Map Editor: New Edit Shape functionality with GeoJSON simplification for easier area boundary management.

Linting System: Initial linting functionality with automated quality checks including:

  • Large GeoJSON detection (areas over 500 points)
  • URL alias clash detection
  • General data quality validations

Area Management Improvements:

  • Built-in GeoJSON fetcher and simplifier when adding areas
  • Population data now fetched from Nominatim
  • Enhanced icon editing with dedicated modal
  • Image editing via URL with improved UX
  • All tags visible in area details, not just required ones

Maintenance Tools:

  • Country geocoding with continental filtering
  • Community organization filters
  • Wildcard search functionality
  • Tag search on maintenance page
  • Pagination for large datasets

Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed silent logout issues with graceful re-login handling
  • Fixed cache sync to include missing areas
  • Fixed custom tag addition and optional tag updates
  • Removed double confirmation for removal actions

Infrastructure ⚙️

Igor made 13 commits to the API this month with some significant infrastructure improvements:

LND Integration: Migrated our Lightning Network payment infrastructure to LND, including comment invoice handling and backend improvements.

Platform Migration: Moved all notifications from Discord to Matrix for better alignment with our open-source values. This includes:

  • Boost alerts now go to Matrix
  • OSM changes channel migrated to Matrix
  • Removed all Discord webhooks from RPC methods

Documentation: Added comprehensive documentation for create_api_key, delete_event, and change_password RPC methods.

Analytics 📊

January was our first full month with our self-hosted Umami analytics!

Graph showing website analytics over the last month

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

Credits 🫶

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to the project including the Shadowy Supertaggers:

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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