BTC Map - May 2026 Update

204 net new merchants, US leading activity, MapLibre switch, and Nostr auth.
BTC Map - May 2026 Update

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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