For many years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get bitcoin into people’s hands. Even long-time bitcoiners often don’t want to pay with bitcoin. At best, they slowly accumulate it, and they don’t really feel like they’re missing anything. They buy it on exchanges, pay fees, expose their personal information, and need a third party’s blessing for every transaction.

I sometimes hear people say that bitcoin doesn’t need anyone and that, on the contrary, we need bitcoin. I see it a little differently. To me, bitcoin is something like a living organism. I consider its creation to be an event almost as rare as the emergence of life itself. But for bitcoin to truly live and serve us as better money, I believe it needs users.

With every transaction, a new connection is created or an existing one is strengthened. Users gradually get better at securing their bitcoin, demand better tools, and bitcoin becomes more resilient.

That’s why I don’t think adoption is some kind of optional bonus.
Adoption is a fundamental condition for bitcoin to actually be useful.

I tried various approaches

• I liked the idea of bringing bitcoin directly into Signal, for example: #85702
  • But Signal still hasn’t added bitcoin support, and I’m afraid there simply isn’t enough incentive for them to do so anytime soon.
• Years ago, I also created an app that allowed people to load bitcoin onto an NFC card and pass it around much like cash: #117623
  • Technically, it worked. But there wasn’t enough interest. It was a nice project, but it didn’t solve a real problem for people.
• Later, I also looked into why even bitcoiners themselves often don’t want to pay with bitcoin: #210830

It’s not enough to let merchants accept bitcoin

In the meantime, I onboarded dozens of businesses and bitcoiners locally.

Most of them were just isolated points on a map. A business started accepting bitcoin, but nobody actually paid with it. Eventually, the merchant forgot how to accept a bitcoin payment or what to do with the bitcoin they received.

It wasn’t until about a year ago that I managed to partially break through this problem.

I onboarded another business simply because we went there regularly. And to this day, every week we come there in a changing group of people, with everyone paying in bitcoin. #1584550

The pub owner didn’t want bitcoin at all in the beginning. What matters to him is us as customers who come to his pub because of bitcoin. In the end, a merchant will accept pretty much any form of payment. What’s more important is finding people who are willing to pay with bitcoin.

Here, we use bitcoin also as a filter for finding interesting people. Anyone willing to pay with bitcoin is kind of open-minded, and it’s a pleasure to get to know them over a regular lunch.

I don’t want to depend on a single app again

Over the years, I’ve recommended various wallets and tools to people. Some of them eventually disappeared.

The custodial version of Wallet of Satoshi, which was the most popular one, stopped working. Alza, the largest retailer in the Czech Republic and one of the first major merchants to accept bitcoin, started requiring additional administrative steps when paying with bitcoin. Qerko, which allowed bitcoin payments at around 1,000 businesses, removed bitcoin support.

At first, this was pretty discouraging. It was the end of 2025, and at the same time the price of bitcoin dropped significantly. I had to figure out what to do with the dozens of people I had introduced to a particular app, which was now no longer going to work for them.

I felt a little trapped. With every app, there was a risk that I would have to repeat the whole migration process again at any time.

But in January 2026, it also seemed to me that AI models had improved significantly, so I decided to try building my own wallet. One that I had been carrying around in my head for years.

Linky

Linky is a bitcoin wallet and, at the same time, a communication layer for the people you want to use bitcoin with.

You can add your contacts, send them messages and bitcoin. You can pay any Lightning invoice. You can load bitcoin in the form of Cashu tokens onto an NFC card or send it to someone in a message — even to someone who doesn’t use Linky at all.

But I’m also trying to build a certain degree of antifragility into it.

From the beginning, I’ve been building Linky so that the app doesn’t depend on a particular operator. There are already other instances running on different domains. If my instance stopped working tomorrow, the network wouldn’t necessarily have to disappear with it.

We achieve this through a combination of three decentralized technologies:

• Cashu for bitcoin,
• Nostr for communication,
• Evolu for data storage.

We use several other interesting technologies as well, but I don’t want to get into the technical details here. There are now six other developers working on Linky. One of them is a close friend of mine who has been improving the app very intensively, primarily on the technical side.

What started as a funny vibecoded app is gradually becoming a serious project.

Around 250 people are currently testing Linky in the local group, and several hundred more users are using it.

Individuals

People use Linky because they like it.

Thanks to its simplicity and steadily increasing reliability, it is gradually becoming the primary bitcoin wallet for many people.

However, most people still don’t actually need a lightning wallet. 😢

You can build a great wallet. You can onboard merchants. You can explain the benefits of bitcoin to people.
But if they have no reason to use bitcoin, all of those things will remain just flashes of activity.

Proxy Payments

Recently, however, we managed to create a feature that I think can at least partially solve this problem. We call it proxy payments.

In the Czech Republic, people increasingly use QR codes for bank transfers. You can find them in online shops as well as physical stores.

For users, this is still somewhat less convenient than paying by card, but merchants love it because they don’t have to pay card-network fees.

Today, I can pay with bitcoin at any of these businesses. No fees and no KYC.

I scan the payment QR code using Linky - just as if I were paying a lightning invoice. Linky offers me the option to send the payment request to my contacts.

I select several friends and send them the offer.

Whoever accepts it first receives the payment details from the QR code. They pay the merchant from their bank account, and I send them sats in return.

Does it worth the effort?

Maybe this sounds like a pointless detour. Why would I ask someone else to pay by bank transfer on my behalf when I could simply pay myself?

For me, it’s useful because I don’t have to hold fiat that is losing value.

For my friends, it’s useful because they don’t have to use an exchange, pay fees, or expose their personal information. They acquire bitcoin in an interactive way — usually in small amounts.

As a side benefit for everyone, there is the more abstract fact that you are building the bitcoin network and thereby helping ensure that you’ll be able to use bitcoin in the future as well.

To use proxy payments comfortably, you need roughly two or three people. Most payments are completed within two minutes. It’s not as direct or fast as paying by card, but it works surprisingly well.

Linky is showing people new ways to use bitcoin.

Come help us test and build our shared bitcoin network. 🙏