The Numbers Tell a Story

Turns out 2025 was a pretty good year for Bitcoin as actual money people use to buy things. According to BTC Map, a platform that tracks which businesses accept Bitcoin (BTC), the number of recently verified merchants jumped 53% last year. We're talking about businesses that have been confirmed within the past year, not just some dusty old listing from 2017.

The count of recently verified merchants hit 11,242, while the total number of merchants accepting Bitcoin climbed to 19,910. That's not just noise in the data. Something changed.

Square's Big Bet on Bitcoin

So what happened? Jameson Lopp, Chief Security Officer at self-custody platform Casa, was "pretty sure" that Square drove the growth. Square is the point-of-sale arm of Block Inc. (SQ), and they made a bold move last year by integrating Bitcoin payments directly into their merchant systems.

Here's the deal Block rolled out: merchants can accept Bitcoin payments with zero processing fees through 2027. That's a significant incentive when credit card processors typically charge 2-3% per transaction. They also introduced a "Conversion" feature that lets merchants automatically convert a portion of their card sales into Bitcoin if they want exposure to the cryptocurrency.

And because managing crypto can be intimidating, Block built a native wallet right into the system. Merchants can buy, sell, hold, and withdraw Bitcoin without jumping through hoops or setting up separate accounts with crypto exchanges.

While BTC Map acknowledged that Square was a "big contributor" to the growth, they noted the increase was happening across the board, not just from one platform.

Beyond Point-of-Sale

The merchant adoption story gets more interesting when you look at payment processor data. Bitcoin accounted for over 31% of global payments processed by BitPay in 2025. BitPay is one of the world's top cryptocurrency payment processors, so that percentage represents real transaction volume.

That's a meaningful chunk of payments flowing through Bitcoin rails, suggesting this isn't just merchants flipping a switch and never using the feature. People are actually paying with Bitcoin.

Market Performance

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $92,611.00, up 1.38% over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Block (SQ) shares closed 0.09% higher at $65.15 during Friday's regular trading session. The stock had a rough 2025 overall, falling nearly 30% for the year despite the positive momentum in Bitcoin merchant adoption.