blinkbtc

news

bitcoin

Cash App just gave millions of users a reason to spend bitcoin at the shops they already visit — 5% back for Lightning payments to Square sellers, no prior bitcoin ownership required.

That was the headline signal in this week's Bitcoin Payment Adoption Brief. But the week went deeper: Bitcoin Pizza Day on May 22 generated spending events across Kenya, Bolivia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and South Africa. Bootlegger Coffee brought Bitcoin checkout to more than 100 locations nationwide through PeachPayments. In rural Uganda, Starlight Elementary reported that its school — 100+ children, four classroom blocks, 22 staff — was paid for almost entirely in sats.

On the infrastructure side, Lightning Enable showed how an API can accept Lightning payments in 10 minutes with no accounts or card rails, and Blink's batch payment feature is powering weekly disbursements to families across three countries.

The full brief covers merchant adoption, payment infrastructure, and ground-level proofs from Zambia to Mozambique to El Salvador.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-21

Payments Adoption Weekly Brief 2026/21

Weekly Brief 2026/20

Every M-Pesa phone number in Kenya now functions as a Bitcoin Lightning Address. Tando said 40 million Kenyans can receive bitcoin that converts instantly to KES in M-Pesa — and field tests confirmed smooth payments at supermarkets, tailors, water vendors, and tourist guides at 30-50 KSh per transaction. Lightning volume reached approximately $1 billion per month according to River data cited at Bitcoin 2026. In the same week, LDK released a production-grade Lightning server node built from the same stack powering Cash App, Square, Lightspark, and Alby.

On the ground, Bolivia's BTC Map merchant count rose from 33 to 134 in twelve months — a fourfold increase across six regions. TravelwingsZA added Bitcoin checkout for flight bookings in South Africa. Zambia's Victoria Falls area grew a three-merchant Lightning cluster. A $5,602 Pan African Bitcoin Tour is bookable in Bitcoin. In Kenya, a high school student bought sanitary pads with sats she earned through a Bitcoin education program. In South Africa, with the public comment deadline on draft capital-flow regulations approaching May 18, Bitcoin Ekasi went house-to-house mobilizing their community to submit responses.

Forty million endpoints. A billion dollars a month. The infrastructure is compounding faster than the regulations can contain it.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-20

Payment Adoption Weekly Brief 2026/20

Weekly Brief 2026/19

Pick n Pay is now accepting Bitcoin at thousands of stores across South Africa — groceries, airtime, municipal bills, paid through a QR scan. In the same week, BTCPay Server reported that Unbankworld processed more than $40 million in Bitcoin payments across 41,416 transactions in six months on open-source infrastructure. BTC Map logged 2,500 net new merchants in April, with South Africa leading. And PeachPayments added four more e-commerce merchants to its Bitcoin checkout: TravelwingsZA, Flook, Plume Africa, and Lug to Lug.

On the ground, Afribit Kibera in Nairobi now counts 400-600 active Bitcoin users — earning, spending, and trusting each other before trusting the technology. At Kenyatta University, 98 students enrolled in self-custody workshops and paid for meals with 21 sats. In Kisii County, a Bitcoin Chama help group pools 1,100 sats every Sunday to buy household goods for one member. In Maputo, 63 people installed self-custody wallets and sent their first Lightning transactions at a Bitdevs meetup. In Bolivia, more than 15 pizzerias accept Bitcoin. In the Dominican Republic, adoption starts with one conversation — and one pizza shop said yes.

The infrastructure is scaling. The communities are compounding. The checkout counter is the same.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-19

Pick n Pay Adds Bitcoin at Thousands of Stores. The Numbers Are Compounding

Weekly Brief 2026/18

In Berlín, El Salvador, a person can spend an entire day using only Bitcoin — coffee, food, transport, groceries, phone bills — and that has been true for three years. No pilot program, no corporate sponsor. Just a community that decided to build it. Meanwhile, Block laid out a stack this week that embeds Bitcoin across its merchant and consumer products: 5% BTC back at Square merchants, automatic conversion of Cash App P2P payments into bitcoin, Bitkey self-custody, and NFC tap-to-pay coming to Square terminals.

On the ground, students at the University of Goma in the DRC bought 25 chickens from the campus farm with Bitcoin — the first African college to accept it. In Zambia, a village runs on Bitcoin for water, restaurant meals, and local merchant purchases. Kenya's Bitcoin Chama is scaling a full circular economy in Kiamokama ward — 8 salaried staff, 25 beehives, and a target of 25,000 families. South African merchants keep adding checkout through PeachPayments while Nick Darlington launched Bitcoin Friendly SA to grow the local payment ecosystem. In Aruba, one of the longest-running community BTCPay Server instances is migrating after five years of uptime.

Three years in El Salvador. Three months in Zambia. The pattern is the same — people build what they need.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-18

Payments Adoption Weekly Brief 2026/18

Payments Adoption Weekly Brief 2026/17

Dedicating this week's brief to legendary SN user @DarthCoin whose unwavering disagreeableness is an inspiration to us all!

South Africa's National Treasury published draft Capital Flow Management Regulations this week that would classify crypto as capital, force transactions above an unspecified threshold through licensed intermediaries, and give authorities the power to compel holders to sell their bitcoin for rand. Self-custody would be effectively criminalized, with penalties of up to R1 million and five years in prison. The draft follows a 2025 court ruling that found crypto is not subject to exchange controls — these regulations are designed to override that ruling by ministerial decree, without parliamentary vote. Money Badger CEO Carel van Wyk called it one of the biggest regulatory changes in the SA financial space in decades. A coalition is forming to submit public comments before the May 16 deadline.

The same week, four South African merchants added Bitcoin checkout through PeachPayments. In Cuba, a community-run Lightning node processed more than 2.5 BTC in outgoing volume for remittances and services. Cooking gas was purchased with sats in Nigeria. Water in Peru. In the Dominican Republic, a grassroots circular economy is already live while proposals for legal clarity move toward Congress. Across Latin America, merchants described the same friction: they can accept sats, but tax rules push them back into fiat.

The grassroots economy keeps building. The question is whether the state will try to stop it or learn to live with it.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-17

making bitcoin everyday money 
https://blink.sv

@8fe53b3751's bio

Colombia passed 100 Bitcoin-accepting merchants this week, with Medellin and Bogota leading the count and Lightning powering fast payments in hospitality. The same week, an AI agent completed a live purchase from a Shopify store over Lightning in 30 seconds — no checkout page, no account, no card — while Lightning Labs shipped the L402 SDK to make that workflow available to any developer.

On the ground, South Africa's Scan to Pay network opened 700,000 merchant locations to Bitcoin spending. Plett reached 120 Bitcoin-accepting shops. Car guards at a Langeberg Mall started receiving Lightning tips through QR codes — no smartphone required. In East Africa, Bitcoin Babies delivered sats stipends to mothers across Kenya and Burundi in a single transaction. And BTC Map added 1,000 new merchants and 10 communities in March.

From a Colombian hospitality counter to an AI agent buying electrolytes — same settlement rail, every scale.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-16