And thebitcoinconf (npub1rwh…7avv) not only showcased Lightning in prime time, but also managed to set a Guinness World Record in the process.
A few years back, critics mocked 10-minute blocks and full mempools, claiming Bitcoin will never scale for payments... it will remain stuck at 7 transactions per second. Now? Bitcoin powered a 35,000+ person event with no issues, and almost no significant coverage.
The best part of this record is that it belongs to everyone who paid with Bitcoin that day. Because it does take a village - inside BTC Inc and BitcoinMagazine (npub1t8a…56yu), there are people who live the mission of hyperbitcoinization. When it matters, they deliver... without much fuss or need for the spotlight.
Outside the conference organization, the fact that Square was launching Lightning payments on their terminals helped tremendously. On record day, at the official conference store, they processed almost as many Bitcoin payments as credit cards - with zero failures. strike (npub1ex7…vyt9), which handled payments for everyone else, did the same, proving you can build on top of their API at scale.
Where to from here? Well, the technology used for this record attempt is FOSS. What was built in btcpayserver (npub155m…dcvg) is available for everyone to use and deploy. Get the instance up, connect it to your Lightning infrastructure (or use Strike, Blink, Boltz, etc), give Bitcoinize terminals to merchants - and you're ready to handle payments at any scale of Bitcoin event. It's a testament to over two years of perfecting this setup - from
hodlhodl (npub1yul…ncdu) Baltic Honey Badger in 2023 to freemadeira (npub1etg…8n6e)'s Bitcoin Atlantis and Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville.
Exciting future is ahead - with Square, we now have a widely available unified credit card + Bitcoin terminal that any business in the US can use. And the FOSS version is almost ready - once it's out, anyone will be able to start a company anywhere in the world, deploy this technology, and enable payments for their community on top of Bitcoin, with zero coding.
As our Guinness World Record judge MartyBent (npub1guh…6hjy) likes to say: we will win. We won't just bring the treasuries of companies onto a Bitcoin standard - we'll empower anyone, anywhere, to participate in the Bitcoin economy with fully FOSS payment terminals. Sats will flow.
Thanks to all of you contributing code and time to make the vision of Bitcoin payments for everyone a reality ✊🗽
