Bitcoin Commerce: The Foundation of the Future, 2025

Genesis story BTCPay Server It is one of the greatest moments in Bitcoin’s history. One developer felt betrayed and cheated by Bitpay, the bitcoin payment processing giant. its attempt at co-opting BitcoinIn a tweet, the Bitcoin community will never forget how he declared war against the company.This is lies, my trust in you is broken, I will make you obsolete.”

Nicolas Dorier created BTCPay Server, one of the largest open-source projects within the Bitcoin and invoicing industries. Much has been written about the context and motivation behind Dorier’s founding of the project — there’s even a documentary It is about time. 

The ambitious project BTCPay Server, its feature-richness and integration with the industry are rarely highlighted. BTCPay Server’s open-source nature, with its lack of a centralized user database, is an excellent privacy enhancement for the users. You can also find out more about the following: This represents the elimination of an essential middleman in payment processing. As a result, Dorier and the BTCPay Server community have created a public goods infrastructure — a kind of commons of payment processing — that provides users real value by saving them fees, and providing them a much smoother user experience given that no personal information is required for the payments to flow.

On their website, they describe themselves as “a self-hosted, open-source cryptocurrency payment processor,” BTCPay Server includes an accounting and invoicing system for retailers, as well as a Bitcoin wallet that supports the Lightning Network, Liquid Network, on-chain support, hardware wallets and a plugin system. The BTCPay server plugins are a great way to extend its core into many niches. The plugins also integrate in ecommerce giants, such as WooCommerce. 

BTCPay Server is a difficult product to evaluate. Because it is a self-hosted platform that does not capture customer data of any kind — it has no central cloud service as other payment processors do — our view into its success is somewhat limited. 

Using other metrics to gauge their impact is a good way of estimating their size. Their primary software repository, for instance, has over 170 open source contributorsAs of the date this was written, there were 8,393 commitments. 

BTCPay Server will have a total of 5 million users by 2025. one million downloads The software can be downloaded directly from the GitHub repository. This does not include cloud services such as Voltage and Lunanode. BTCPay Server is often used by multiple merchants to host multiple stores. 

R0ckstardev told Bitcoin Magazine, that hundreds of thousands BTCPay server instances could exist around the world. Tobe Chileta, Bitcoin Magazine was also informed by a contributing member of the project that “of the seven continents of the world, I think it is only Antarctica that I haven’t seen someone run BTCPay server.” Then, he added: “I’m certain we have merchants running in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Australia.”

Companies

BTCPay Servers’ website is a business. directoryThe list of onboarded merchants is not exhaustive but does cover hundreds. BTCPay Server also regularly conducts case studies for user cohorts and major merchants using the software. These documents their integration as well as their story. case studies page. This book gives a great insight into the Bitcoin community in different parts of the world. It also contains useful guides to help you replicate certain results.

Namecheap for instance boasted about its low prices. 70 million dollars‘ in bitcoin volume, since the integration of BTCPay Server. They recorded 1.1m total transactions between May 18, 2020 and October 20, 2024. Over 500,000 users paid in bitcoin. The revenue generated by these payments was $73 million. 

BTC Inc. has set up BTCPay Servers in its stores for several years. one-hour behind-the-scenes Documentary on the difficulties of setting up hundreds of merchants during a Bitcoin conference in Nashville (filmed at the Nashville 2024 Bitcoin Conference). Over 25,000 people attended the event, including Donald J. Trump, the 47th President of the United States.

BTCPay Server, used at the recent Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas to process new records of Bitcoin transactions. eight-hour period, with 4,187 transactions The total is 4,000 transactions. Guinness World Records had set a target of 4,000 transactions. 

Integrations & Plugins

The plugin system is one of BTCPay’s most significant features. The developer community optimized BTCPay Server to allow for a wide range of interactions between companies and Bitcoin. This has led them to optimize the code towards a plugin-based model, which developers can use with an extensive set of documentation. GitHub repos Then, you can. API. BTCPay Server has over 30 plug-ins. The following are some of our greatest hits.

Boltz Swap Exchange Plugin

Boltz exchange is an atomic-swap focused on various Bitcoin layers like Liquid Lightning Rootstock as well as Bitcoin on chain. Recently, it has been gaining popularity as a simple solution to channel rebalancing problems Lightning wallets encounter. R0ckstardev said to Bitcoin Magazine that Boltz is a particularly good integration. 

Boltz is a Bitcoin Bridge that allows you to switch between layers of Bitcoin while maintaining maximum control over your funds. atomic swap This technology eliminates any third-party involvement in payments that are crypto-native. Boltz can be used via BTCPay Server for a Lightning Payment, in which the sats will initially rest on a Liquid Network wallet, and then the Boltz plug-in will pull them from the balance. Boltz swaps the L-BTC for Lightning Network sats and then sends the satoshis to the recipient. It is a non-custodial process.

It is the same as “lightning service provider” Style infrastructure Breez wallet recently announced integration. While it is not quite as cheap as a user-operated Lightning node can be in the best of cases, it is far easier to set up and run — only demanding a few clicks on the BTCPay Server interface. This Boltz plug-in is a Lightning node for BTCPay Server, and integrates natively with invoicing, accounting, and the BTCPay Server interface. 

The technology is also scalable: A BTCPay server admin can manage many merchants without having to maintain a Lightning node. 

Bolt Cards Plugin

You can also find out more about the following: Bolt cardThe company, and its product, created by Coincenter, have recently gained popularity thanks to their unique graphic and laser eyes that illuminate when you tap-to pay. The BTCPay Server is also available to users, allowing them to manage these NFC cards and link them with their wallets.

Bolt Cards are NFC devices with tap-topay that act like debit card. The same tap to pay experience as Visa or Mastercard can be used to make bitcoin payments. However, the privacy is much better since the bankcards send your full card number and name with each payment. Lightning allows users to use their Lightning nodes to complete payments without revealing any personal information. 

Bolt card integration in BTCPay Server makes it easy for users to check, set, or reset their Bolt card balances. They can also spend straight from Lightning nodes integrated into BTCPay Server. 

Ghost blogging suite

Ghost, a popular BTCPay has integrated its open-source blogging software via a plug-in, which allows users to accept payments and access paywall content. The integration is compatible with all types of media and allows for a paid membership to access exclusive content. It’s similar in concept to Patreon, but using bitcoin.

Nostr Support 

Nostr also integrated as a pluginThis unlocks the interactivity of that entire ecosystem. This plugin allows for user verification in place of maintaining a database. 

Satoshi Tickets

Satoshi Tickets are an alternative to Satoshi Tickets. event ticket management systemBTCPay Server’s plugins offer a wide range of tools and unlock a lot of potential. The invoicing and payment accounting layers are fully integrated into the ticket system, which allows businesses to accept both bitcoins and fiat with other plugins.

Prism

BTCPay Server is a popular choice at Bitcoin conferences where many merchants accept Bitcoin as a payment. They are also willing to adopt new technology. Prism plug-in is the result of many tests that show merchants require dollar stability in order to cover costs. Prism allows the splitting of sats flow Different pockets of value can be created by allowing the merchant to convert 80% or more of their revenues to USDT using an exchange such as Sideshift and keeping the other 20% of revenue in bitcoin.

The technology can be essential to cashflow-heavy companies that are unable to tolerate the risk of volatility and have predictable costs. Profits can be easily kept in BTC, if the business so wishes. 

Cash Back

Even a Cash plugin This software supports payments in cash using the BTCPay server as its billing suite. The software supports many fiat currencies. This is a great feature for businesses who do not cater to the Bitcoin market. 

The Podserver

BTCPay Server allows even podcasters, who are a major part of the Bitcoin Community to set up their own self-hosted podcasting 2.0 stream. dedicated plugin.

Supporters

BTCPay Server has been supported by philanthropic and non-profit organisations through donations and grants, such as Opensats and Human Rights Foundation. Some contributors may be paid to complete specific tasks or work in general. Meanwhile, a nonprofit BTCPay Server Foundation has been created to manage traditional donations.