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%)

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:

• 🇺🇸 Columbia SC Bitcoin
• 🇧🇷 BotuSats
• 🇺🇸 Blue Water Bitcoin
• 🇮🇳 Bitshala
• 🇦🇷 Bitcoin Comarca Andina

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:

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.