234 net new merchants, a talk in Helsinki and a new Android release. 👀
Summary 📝
The map finished September with 27,148 merchants, up 234 on the month, and 29,622 places in total including exchanges and ATMs.
Places verified in the last year fell by 286 to 15,957, and the average merchant is now 457 days past its last check, 19 days further out than a month ago. Growth has continued; however, keeping the map accurate has not kept up with it. 😥 Remember, re-verifying a few places near you helps more than adding new ones!
September was a busy one for the apps! The Add Location flow was rebuilt on the web app and Android's data layer was rewritten to work as local/offline first.
We also took the map to BTC HEL in Helsinki this month and showed off some cool new charts. 👀
Key Figures 📈
Last three months
Metric July August September Merchants 26,575 26,914 27,148 Places 29,061 29,389 29,622 Verified (1y) 16,860 16,243 15,957 Days since check 418 438 457 Merchants boosted 14 12 24 Total boost duration 1,605 935 2,085 Comments 25 26 28 Change
Metric 1 month 3 months 12 months Merchants +234 (+0.9%) +1,075 (+4.1%) +10,748 (+65.5%) Places +233 (+0.8%) +1,050 (+3.7%) +11,380 (+62.4%) Verified (1y) −286 (−1.8%) −1,033 (−6.1%) +6,259 (+64.5%) Days since check +19 (+4.3%) +55 (+13.7%) +50 (+12.3%) Merchants boosted +12 (+100.0%) +13 (+118.2%) +12 (+100.0%) Total boost duration +1,150 (+123.0%) +1,695 (+434.6%) +1,605 (+334.4%) Comments +2 (+7.7%) −6 (−17.6%) −28 (−50.0%) Growth
Commentary
Month-end figures, as published; current figures are on the BTC Map dashboard. Merchants are shops and services; places also counts exchanges and ATMs; verified (1y) covers the last twelve months; days since check is the average wait, so higher is worse; boosted and comments are that month's own activity.
The three- and twelve-month changes come from the API's dashboard series, which is revised after publication.
BTC HEL 2026 🇫🇮
Nathan presented The State of Bitcoin Merchant Adoption at BTCHEL 2026, The Nordic Bitcoin Conference, at Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki on 25 September. Thirty minutes including Q&A, covering where the map stands globally, how density and verification differ between countries, and where the gaps are, with a section on the Nordics and Finland.
The slides run to 32 pages, and the session abstract is on the conference site.
Web App 🕸️
107 pull requests were closed on the web app in September, 96 of them merged, nearly all of them one project: Add Location, rebuilt from the ground up.
The form now lives in a side panel on the map rather than on a page of its own. The pin freezes while you fill it in, with a Move pin chip to reposition it, a step indicator tracks progress, and a review step sits in front of submit. Opening hours have a proper editor instead of being typed by hand, and the address is reverse geocoded from the pin.
Smaller changes landed alongside it. Every form now uses one error style: add location, sign-up, comments, add community and the verify flows. Sign-up is self-service, so new users choose their own credentials rather than being handed a throwaway account. A password the user chose is never kept in the browser. Submissions carry the signed-in account and post to the API's new endpoint. A "Know OSM? Edit directly" link routes experienced mappers to the OSM editing path. Join Us is now a native onboarding guide and the third hero call to action on the home page. Community and country pages have an events section.
Icons are now bundled with the app, so Iconify rate limits can no longer blank out pins. The payment filters read onchain, lightning and unknown as three states, instead of dropping places without the tag.
Android App 🤖
Android shipped v1.2.0 on 30 September, after 268 commits over the month. Most of the month went into the data layer: places, areas, events and comments ship as bundled snapshots, so a fresh install only syncs the delta. Area geometry and chips read from the local cache, map areas can be downloaded for offline use, and a world basemap is bundled for zoomed-out views.
Area names and descriptions, opening hours and the activity feed are translated, and search matches places and areas by their localised names. The activity feed was rebuilt around Local, Following and Saved tabs, with a filter dialog, deleted entries and a preview map. Places can be submitted from the app, with a verify/report screen alongside redesigned add-comment, boost and payment screens, and OpenStreetMap actions on the place screen. Submissions are tagged with the app version.
Accounts and payments survive screen rotation and the app being killed, and stored credentials are redacted. A boost purchase or paid invoice is reported once. Search moved to the v4 API, the verified-within filter works again, and outdated merchants and exchange markers fade. The map's area chips show initials and an events badge.
There is also a new documentation site with getting-started, merchant and verification guides.
Infrastructure ⚙️
The API repo took 32 commits over the month. Place submissions and place reports got REST endpoints, with the submitting user recorded on both. Events joined the v4 search index and gained their own endpoint with an optional date window. Areas and events picked up delta sync, start dates are now required, and timezones are inferred from an event's coordinates.
Areas can be requested in a given language, and the v4 area sync carries those names through. That is what the apps read to show translated areas. Overlapping element syncs are prevented, and the project moved to a self-hosted Overpass instance.
Gitea issues are now a summary plus an OSM tag block, with
osm:<tag>fields passed through and titles prefixed by country and community. That makes a submission readable without opening the map. Another batch of missing category icons was drawn.The Gitea server was upgraded, LND was upgraded and reboot-tested, SSH access was hardened, and the fleet gained an lnbits/nostr host.
Communities and Contributors 🫂
Three communities joined in September: Bitcoin Ekiti in Nigeria, Satoshi Team - Cundinamarca and Mi Tierra Digital - San Vicente del Caguán in Colombia. The map now has 689 communities.
Most of the month's editing was in the United States, with 431 changes, over half of them new places. Thailand's 169 changes were almost all updates to places already on the map, and El Salvador's 158 came with four additions. Among communities, Bitcoin Berlín SV led with 149 changes, followed by Satoshi Team - Antioquia on 68 and BitPlebs Los Angeles on 50, mostly new places.
Country totals at the end of the month: the United States has 10,570 places with 89% verified in the last year, South Africa 2,755 at 59%, Brazil 2,220 at 26%. Among communities, Proof of Bitcoin has 933 places, Mi Primer Bitcoin 435, and BitPlebs Los Angeles 431 at 93% verified.
Comino led September with 184 edits, Rockedf followed with 175 (151 of them new places) and Genesisvaleria with 144. Thanks to them, and to everyone else in the tables below.
Detailed Tables 📊
The month's figures in full.
Country Activity 📈
Countries ranked by merchant data edited during the month.
Name Total Created Updated Deleted Comments 🇺🇸 United States of America 431 251 141 39 7 🇹🇭 Thailand 169 4 157 8 1 🇸🇻 El Salvador 158 4 125 29 0 🇨🇴 Colombia 101 7 93 1 0 🇨🇭 Switzerland 58 2 49 7 2 🇧🇷 Brazil 38 13 24 1 0 🇫🇷 France 35 2 25 8 0 🇵🇹 Portugal 34 1 30 3 1 🇻🇪 Venezuela 33 0 33 0 0 🇨🇿 Czechia 27 3 24 0 6 Community Activity 📈
The same, by community.
Name Total Created Updated Deleted Comments 🇸🇻 Bitcoin Berlín SV 149 1 119 29 0 🇨🇴 Satoshi Team - Antioquia 68 7 60 1 0 🇺🇸 BitPlebs Los Angeles 50 30 20 0 0 🇨🇴 Cafeteros Bitcoiners 47 6 40 1 0 🇻🇪 Satoshi en Venezuela 32 0 32 0 0 🇹🇭 BOB Space 28 0 27 1 1 🇵🇹 FREE Madeira 25 1 22 2 0 🇹🇭 Huai Phueng Project 25 0 25 0 0 🇨🇴 Satoshi Team - Bogotá 21 0 21 0 0 🇺🇸 Bay Area Bitcoiners 20 14 6 0 0 Country Leaderboard 📊
Where countries stood when the month closed, ranked by how many places they have. The up-to-date column is the share verified within the last year. BTC Map's country leaderboard shows the same numbers ordered by its verification-weighted score.
Name Places Verified (1y) Up-To-Date 🇺🇸 United States of America 10,570 9,376 89% 🇿🇦 South Africa 2,755 1,631 59% 🇧🇷 Brazil 2,220 565 26% 🇸🇻 El Salvador 1,307 323 25% 🇮🇹 Italy 1,063 170 16% 🇨🇭 Switzerland 751 318 42% 🇨🇦 Canada 728 318 44% 🇩🇪 Germany 620 175 28% 🇲🇽 Mexico 562 56 10% 🇹🇭 Thailand 495 324 66% Community Leaderboard 📊
The same for communities, frozen at the close of the month. The community leaderboard is the live version.
Name Places Verified (1y) Up-To-Date 🇿🇦 Proof of Bitcoin 933 579 62% 🇸🇻 Mi Primer Bitcoin 435 26 6% 🇺🇸 BitPlebs Los Angeles 431 399 93% 🇿🇦 Bitshack 391 271 69% 🇿🇦 Bitcoin Cape Town 377 189 50% 🇺🇸 Colorado Bitcoin 297 274 92% 🇺🇸 Bay Area Bitcoiners 291 275 94% 🇨🇭 Lugano Plan B 262 79 30% 🇬🇪 Bitcoin Movement Georgia 224 48 21% 🇧🇷 Bitcoin é aqui! 222 139 63% Active Taggers 🏆
September's most active contributors, by edits made.
📣 Shoutout to the top 3:
- 🥇 Comino with 184 edits
- 🥈 Rockedf with 175 edits
- 🥉 Genesisvaleria with 144 edits
Name Total Edits Created Updated Deleted Comino 184 18 142 24 Rockedf 175 151 20 4 Genesisvaleria 144 0 120 24 RoseBTCmap 131 84 30 17 Mind09 106 1 97 8 whammo 97 0 97 0 ArancioneMilano 33 33 0 0 pantufla 32 0 32 0 BTCGVA 30 2 24 4 Senihtu 24 0 24 0 empty_child 22 2 15 5 Hans Jürgen von Lengerke 20 1 12 7 Liongrass 16 2 8 6 Dimitar155 16 0 16 0 descubrebitcoin 14 0 13 1 Find current and historical stats on the Tagger Leaderboard.
New Communities 🫂
The map now has 689 communities.
Analytics 📊
Our September website stats are as follows:
Check out the BTC Map Analytics Dashboard. Track our growth and see where users are coming from in real time.
Credits 🫶
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the project this month, including the Shadowy Supertaggers:
- Hannes / escapedcat -- the Add Location rebuild (map side panel, pin freeze, review step, structured opening hours, reverse geocoded address), inline validation across every form, self-service signup, the native Join Us guide, events on area pages, the offline icon bundling fix, and API type maintenance.
- Igor Bubelov -- the API's place submission and report endpoints, the events work and delta sync, localized area names, Gitea issue syncing, the Android 1.2.0 release (offline-first data bundling, localisation, and hardened auth and payment flows), the CLI event commands, Event Admin timezone handling, and the Gitea/LND fleet maintenance.
- Nathan / dadofsambonzuki -- formatting Gitea issue bodies as a human summary plus an OSM tag block, with
osm:<tag>fields passed through.- Edwin Comino / LighthouseFR -- Dutch translations.
- Comino, Rockedf, Genesisvaleria, and all the active taggers listed above.
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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