BTC Map - May 2026 Update
- Global Metrics 🌍️
- Country Activity 📈
- Community Activity 📈
- New Communities 🫂
- Active Taggers 🏆
- Web App 🕸️
- Infrastructure ⚙️
- Android App 🤖
- Credits 🫶
- Analytics 📊
- Support Us 🤝
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/nostrREST 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.
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