BTC Map September 2026 Update

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

Change

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.

Community Activity 📈

The same, by community.

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.

Community Leaderboard 📊

The same for communities, frozen at the close of the month. The community leaderboard is the live version.

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

Find current and historical stats on the Tagger Leaderboard.

New Communities 🫂

• 🇳🇬 Bitcoin Ekiti
• 🇨🇴 Satoshi Team - Cundinamarca
• 🇨🇴 Mi Tierra Digital - San Vicente del Caguán

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.