This week Bitcoin payments showed up at both ends of the scale. One operator pushed nearly fifty million dollars through open-source rails in a year. A school canteen in El Salvador improvised a way for students to tap and pay in sats. New merchants opened in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. And Strike's CEO confirmed why so many people keep moving to self-custody. Enterprise-grade volume and grassroots ingenuity, growing at the same time.
$49.3 million on open-source rails: unbankworld, a non-custodial Bitcoin exchange running on BTCPay Server (@BtcpayServer), processed $49.3 million across 70,566 transactions over the past 12 months — all on self-hosted, open-source infrastructure with no third-party processor in the middle. It's a rare hard number in a space thin on disclosed volume, and proof that open-source Bitcoin payment rails can carry eight-figure throughput without vendor lock-in.
Spotlight: The School Canteen That Improvised Bitcoin
When a high school in Berlín, El Salvador stopped allowing phones, the students didn't stop paying in Bitcoin — they found another way. They asked Yessenia, who runs the school canteen, to accept NFC card payments. She got a Bitcoin point-of-sale device from the local Bitcoin Center, and now students tap a card to pay in sats. Bitcoin Berlín SV (@BitcoinBerlinSV) shared the story.
This is adoption pulled by demand, not pushed by a company. The users hit a constraint and asked a merchant to adapt — and she did. That's what a real payment culture looks like: when the phones go away and people still want to pay in Bitcoin.
1) Merchant & Enterprise Adoption
New spend endpoints opened in two fresh markets this week — one of them a country the brief hasn't reached before.
- Cuba — a first merchant on the map: ISLACELL, a business in La Isla de la Juventud, said it now accepts Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, publishing the address islacell@lachispa.me and a BTC Map listing. A new country entering the everyday-payments picture is a meaningful widening of where Bitcoin can be spent.
- Dominican Republic — funding the ecosystem: Bitcoin Dominicana (@btcdominicana) said it received 7.8 million sats from Geyser Fund (@geyserfund) to support merchant adoption, education, policy, and community work — and onboarded a custom gaming-PC builder in West Santo Domingo who wasn't previously part of the local Bitcoin community. Grant-funded ecosystem-building plus organic merchant growth.
- Kenya — one currency, many purchases: A traveler crossing from Uganda to Kenya (@tando_me) said they skipped the usual shilling-to-shilling conversion entirely — buying a SIM card, paying at restaurants, and ordering food through Glovo, all in Bitcoin. Everyday spend across telecom, dining, and delivery on a single rail.
2) Payment Infrastructure
Tooling this week aimed at making acceptance simpler for merchants and self-custody easier for everyday users.
- BTCPay Server — Lightning and Ark, without the plumbing: Second's new Bark plugin for BTCPay Server lets merchants enable Lightning and Ark payments without managing payment channels or liquidity. Removing that operational burden makes Bitcoin acceptance more approachable for ordinary shops.
- Self-custody goes multi-asset: Wallet of Satoshi (@walletofsatoshi) opened a beta putting dollars in stablecoins and Bitcoin together in one self-custody Lightning app on iOS and Android. It's an early signal that the move to self-custody is extending beyond bitcoin-only wallets — worth watching as a trend, with details on supported assets and regions still to come.
- Agentic commerce keeps shipping: Lightning Enable (@lightningenable) rolled out an L402 "Fast Lane" — a 30-day trial activated by a 100-sat Lightning payment to prove the rail works — and a merch store where AI agents buy physical goods through a cart → 402 invoice → pay → claim → ship flow. Machines paying over the same Lightning rails people use.
3) Circular Economy & Ground-Level Proofs
On the ground, communities kept widening the loop between earning and spending.
- Kenya — a circular economy at scale: Bitcoin Chama (@Bitcoinchama) described its Bitcoin circular economy as reaching 30,000+ families — earning in sats and spending in sats within the same community. Whatever the precise headcount, it points to a community payment loop far larger than a handful of merchants.
- South Africa — beyond the painted logo: Bitcoin Ekasi (@BitcoinEkasi) welcomed AquaBitcoin and JAN3 as partners in its Painted Shack initiative, pairing visible merchant onboarding with ongoing education and support to build circular economies in Mossel Bay townships.
- Kenya — avocados for sats: BitBiashara (@BitBiashara) said its Tena Estate network keeps growing — residents as customers and business owners, more shops accepting Bitcoin, and a member selling fresh avocados for sats after an education session. Money circulating inside the neighborhood.
- A UX lesson from the field: Bitcoin Witsand (@BitcoinWitsand) said circular-economy users prefer wallets that default to sats rather than BTC — explaining BTC-denominated amounts at the counter simply takes too long. A small design choice with real checkout consequences. Separately, Bitcoin House Bali highlighted a Bitcoiner in Aceh using Bitcoin for transparent flood-relief fundraising.
4) Regulatory & Policy
The regulatory story that started last week got a reply from the top.
- Strike's CEO confirms the UK name rule: After a user reported that Strike demanded a Lightning sender's full name, Strike CEO Jack Mallers (@jackmallers) responded directly: "Unfortunately, UK regulations force our hand here. This isn't a reflection of our values, it's us complying with local law so we're able to offer the service in the UK at all." It's a candid confirmation that jurisdiction-specific rules can attach identity requirements to a Lightning transfer — and a reminder of exactly why the move to holding your own keys keeps gathering pace.
From $49.3 million on open-source rails to a school canteen tapping cards for lunch, this was a week of Bitcoin payments proving themselves at every scale — new countries came online, and the case for self-custody got a little clearer. Fittingly, we put our own money where our mouth is: we forced 100,000 sats out of Spark and back onto the Bitcoin mainnet using nothing but the seed and a saved recovery bundle — no operator cooperation needed. Full receipt, fees, and txIDs below. See you next week.
