Payment in BTC is becoming more and more popular. These are not the wishes of the cryptocurrency community, but hard data from BTC Map. The number of stores and enterprises accepting payments in BTC increased threefold in 2023.
Payment in BTC is now possible in over 6,000 places
Satoshi Nakamoto's dream was to create a financial system that would be free from third parties such as banks. Although in 2009 this idea seemed completely unrealistic, only 15 years later payment in BTC is already possible in over 6,000 places around the world. Only in 2023, the number of entrepreneurs and stores that decided to introduce the BTC payment option increased threefold.
This data comes from BTC Map, a website designed to quickly find places where BTC payments are available. As an interesting fact, it is worth adding that in Poland we can currently pay with BTC in 119 places. The largest accumulation is, of course, around Warsaw, Krakow and Wrocław. As for the world, the largest concentration of shops and companies that accept payments in BTC is Latin America. This fact should not be surprising, because this is where the country of El Salvador is located, which adopted bitcoin as the second official currency in 2021.
Will payment in BTC soon become the standard?
The development of cryptocurrency awareness among society is increasing. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are also starting to be talked about in the mainstream media – due to increased expectations of the SEC's approval of bitcoin-based spot ETFs. All this means that BTC is starting to be perceived as the digital equivalent of gold, which is even said by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
So in 2024, will we have a sixfold increase in places that accept Bitcoin payments? This cannot be ruled out, because only 8 days of January have passed, and one of the largest Japanese e-commerce companies (Mercari) announced that it will soon allow all users to buy products using bitcoin. It is worth adding that this store has 22 million active users per month.
