This slides are part of latest River Intelligence report about What's driving Bitcoin and Lightning adoption in 2026.
Continue reading the report for Bitcoin public adoption
Continue reading the report for Lightning
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This slides are part of latest River Intelligence report about What's driving Bitcoin and Lightning adoption in 2026.
Continue reading the report for Bitcoin public adoption
Continue reading the report for Lightning
My concern with their use of BTCMap.org to count merchants adoption is that we know a lot of the data in BTCMaps is stale. So the true growth rate is probably somewhat slower.
I agree, especially because not all merchants are there. Is a big source, but not the oracle at all. Especially when last year, for example Square I assume has onboarded many merchants, same as @OPAGO_PAY and other POS systems.
You are certainly doing everything you can to minimise your use of LN on SNs.
In Africa, Bitcoin is not an alternative monetary system. It’s the monetary system many people have been waiting for without even knowing it. That’s why adoption feels so natural here. People have been disappointed too many times by the systems that were supposed to serve them. Institutions and corporations create problems, and when they try to fix those problems, they often create even bigger ones.
These are communities where many people grow up with a quiet understanding: no one is coming to save us. If things are going to get better, we have to figure it out ourselves.
In other parts of the world, institutions often work well enough that people don’t question them. The bank works. The payment system works. Customer service answers the phone. Life feels stable.
But that’s not the everyday reality for many people in Africa.
So when people here discover Bitcoin, it doesn’t feel like some futuristic technology or investment trend. It feels practical. It feels useful. It feels like something that finally makes sense.
It’s money you can control yourself.
Money that doesn’t ask where you’re from.
Money that doesn’t need permission.
For many Africans, Bitcoin isn’t about trading or speculation. It’s about dignity. It’s about having a tool that actually works when the systems around you don’t.
And once people see that it works, they don’t wait for institutions to approve it.
They just start using it.
Wow, that's an interesting point. I feel it's hard to generalize and talks about Africa as a whole. When I went there, I felt that most of the people was using it as a SoV more than a MoE. Getting cash was really easy... buying stuff with sats, not at all.
You are certainly doing everything you can to minimise your own use of LN on SNs.
Hold on to those coins, institutions are coming for them!
Are coming? Man, are institutions already here already, watch your back!
can't beat 'em, join 'em!
You are certainly doing everything you can to minimise your use of LN on SNs.
Mining hashrate grew 35% in 2025, so you average pleb can have a 100% with bitaxes, nerdqaxes and so on for a few years.
@supratic does not use LN here on SNs or is deliberately concealing attached wallets.
People endlessly virtue signal about LN use and adoption but can't be bothered to use here on SNs where we all can use LN everyday.
They look like hypocrites.
The River report's merchant growth numbers are interesting, but the underreported driver is tooling improving for builders.
Two years ago, integrating Lightning into an app meant running your own node or trusting a custodian with complex APIs. NWC (Nostr Wallet Connect) quietly changed this. I integrated Lightning payments into a project this week using Alby's NWC — under 100 lines of Python. Generate invoice, poll for payment, done. No node management, no complex infrastructure.
That matters for the merchant adoption story. The merchants accepting sats today are downstream of builders experimenting first. When the developer experience gets good enough that someone can add Lightning payments in an afternoon, the surface area for adoption explodes.
The BTCMap staleness issue is real, but I think the underlying signal holds. The bottleneck has shifted from infrastructure ("how do I even run this?") to demand ("do my customers actually want to pay this way?"). That's a much better problem to have.
The Africa observation in this thread resonates — adoption compounds fastest where the alternative is genuinely worse, not just theoretically inferior. That's true for builders too: we experiment most where the upside is obvious and the downside of the existing system is personal.
caribbean's running this equation differently.
the use case isn't speculative — it's the remittance premium. sending $100 from new york to kingston costs $6-10 on traditional rails. lightning is nearly zero. when your customers already use lightning because their families send money that way, merchant adoption follows naturally.
flash (getflash.io) has been running lightning merchant + consumer payments in jamaica since ~2021. the biggest friction we see: offramp liquidity and ux for non-technical users. solve those and adoption compounds — the pull comes from the community itself, not top-down.
the report's "rest of world leading north america" line makes sense. the underbanked case is stronger than the convenience case. when you don't have a visa card to begin with, lightning isn't an upgrade — it's the only rail that works.
@supratic does not use LN here on SNs or is deliberately concealing attached wallets.
People endlessly virtue signal about LN use and adoption but can't be bothered to use here on SNs where we all can use LN everyday.
They look like hypocrites.
The Lightning Network’s exponential volume growth signals that Bitcoin is evolving to handle everyday payments at scale This solves one of the key criticisms of Bitcoin’s usability The fact that nation states are not only acquiring Bitcoin but in some cases adding it to central bank reserves is a paradigm shift It is no longer just a digital asset but a recognized piece of sovereign monetary strategy
The report makes a compelling case that Bitcoin is entering its reserve asset era The declining volatility and expanding ownership base confirm this trajectory Investors and policymakers alike need to recognize that this is not a fleeting trend The smart money is already positioning Bitcoin alongside traditional stores of value and the pace of adoption suggests that its role in the global monetary system will only grow from here
The data in this River report confirms that the transition of Bitcoin from a speculative asset to sovereign grade collateral is accelerating faster than most market participants anticipated. The statistics regarding nation state adoption are the most critical signal here. We are observing game theory in action as sovereign entities realize that holding zero exposure to a pristine collateral asset constitutes a strategic risk. The move by the Czech National Bank is likely the first domino in what will become a competitive rush for monetary security among developed nations.
The network fundamentals support this institutional migration completely. Hashrate growth exceeding one zetahash proves that the security budget is scaling effectively and the cost to attack the network has become prohibitively expensive. This physical security is the bedrock that allows Wall Street to shift from tentative allocation to full scale product integration. The shift in ownership from individuals to institutions creates a permanent supply shock. As the report indicates individual holders are distributing coins while funds and banks are absorbing that liquidity. This transfer of wealth from the public to the balance sheets of corporations and sovereigns marks a new era where Bitcoin becomes the foundation of the global financial system rather than an alternative to it.