Bitcoin mining firm GoMining released a software development kit and API access for its GoBTC Pay protocol on Friday, positioning itself as a direct competitor to Block’s Square in the merchant payment space. The company’s pitch hinges on a fundamental difference in philosophy: merchants receive bitcoin, not dollars, by default.
The move lands at an interesting moment. Bitcoin has spent years struggling to gain traction as a medium of exchange rather than just a store of value. Payment processors like Square, BitPay, and others have mostly solved this by shielding merchants from volatility, auto-converting incoming BTC to fiat. GoMining is betting that enough businesses now want the bitcoin itself.
GoBTC Pay’s Architecture and Fee Structure
GoMining’s system settles transactions directly on the Bitcoin network rather than through a layer-2 solution like Lightning. The company leverages its Stratum V2 mining protocol to achieve what it claims is an average settlement time of around 12 hours. That’s considerably slower than Lightning’s near-instant finality but faster than waiting for the standard six confirmations most exchanges require (which can take an hour or more during network congestion).
Merchants using GoBTC Pay will pay 0.2% in transaction fees. That amount gets split 50-50 between wallet providers and miners. For context, Square’s standard credit card processing runs 2.6% plus 10 cents per tap, dip, or swipe. Even accounting for the merchant’s potential cost to convert bitcoin to fiat later, GoMining’s fee looks attractive on paper.
The company plans to onboard an initial cohort of 10 merchants as part of the rollout, though it hasn’t disclosed which businesses have signed up. CEO Mark Zalan framed the approach as preserving bitcoin’s core properties rather than diluting them.
“Our idea isn’t to squeeze bitcoin into the old fiat experience and lose what makes it bitcoin along the way,” Zalan said in a Telegram interview with CoinDesk. “It’s to solve the real problems with BTC payments, the high and variable fees, the slow and unpredictable settlement, while preserving non-custody and onchain finality.”
That last phrase matters. On-chain finality means the transaction exists permanently on the Bitcoin blockchain once confirmed. Non-custodial means GoMining never holds the merchant’s funds. Both are selling points for businesses wary of counterparty risk after the Celsius, FTX, and BlockFi collapses.
How Square’s Bitcoin Offering Works Differently
Jack Dorsey’s Block (trading under ticker XYZ) has been expanding its own bitcoin payment capabilities over the past year. Square’s service routes transactions through the Lightning Network, which enables near-instant settlement and micro-transactions that would be impractical on the base layer. The tradeoff is that Lightning requires channel liquidity management, something most small merchants aren’t equipped to handle.
The more significant difference is what happens on the merchant’s side. Square converts bitcoin payments into US dollars by default. A customer pays in BTC, but the coffee shop receives dollars in their Square account. Merchants can opt to receive bitcoin instead, but the system clearly nudges them toward the familiar.
GoMining flips that default. Retailers who want fiat will need to handle the conversion themselves, either through an exchange, a service like Strike, or an over-the-counter desk. That’s friction, and it’s intentional. Zalan and his team are making a bet about the direction of merchant preferences.
Is that bet correct? The evidence is mixed. On one hand, bitcoin’s growing adoption as a treasury asset by public companies like Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) suggests some businesses see holding BTC as strategically valuable. You can track corporate bitcoin holdings on our Bitcoin Treasury dashboard to see the scope of that trend. On the other hand, most small and medium businesses operate on thin margins and can’t afford to take directional exposure to an asset that can swing 10% in a week.
The Merchant Adoption Problem Bitcoin Still Hasn’t Solved
Bitcoin’s original whitepaper, published in 2008, described “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” Seventeen years later, you still can’t buy a sandwich at most delis with it. The reasons are well documented: volatility, transaction fees that spike unpredictably, confirmation times measured in minutes or hours, and the tax headache of tracking cost basis on every purchase.
Payment processors have addressed some of these issues by abstracting them away. BitPay, for instance, locks in the exchange rate at the moment of purchase and pays the merchant in their preferred currency. The merchant never touches bitcoin and therefore doesn’t care about its price moves. That’s a sensible solution for businesses that just want to accept another payment rail without thinking about it.
GoMining’s approach serves a different customer: the merchant who actively wants bitcoin exposure. These might be businesses in regions with unstable local currencies, companies making a political or philosophical statement about money, or simply owners who believe BTC will appreciate and want to accumulate it through operations.
The 12-hour settlement window is worth examining. It’s long enough that a determined attacker could theoretically exploit price movements (buy something when BTC is spiking, walk away with the goods, watch the payment confirm after a crash). Established payment networks solve this with fraud protection and chargebacks, neither of which exist natively on Bitcoin. GoMining will need to address merchant concerns about this gap if it wants mainstream adoption.
For perspective on where bitcoin’s price currently sits, our market overview shows BTC dominance and total crypto market cap in real time. The source article listed bitcoin at $62,439.20 at the time of publication, down from the highs above $80,000 seen earlier this year. Price volatility remains the core challenge for any payment system that settles in BTC.
Stratum V2 and the Mining Connection
GoMining isn’t just a payment company. It’s primarily a bitcoin mining operation, and that context shapes how GoBTC Pay works. The Stratum V2 protocol the company uses for settlement is a mining communication standard that improves efficiency and decentralization compared to the older Stratum protocol most pools still run.
By routing payments through its mining infrastructure, GoMining can theoretically prioritize transaction inclusion in blocks its pool mines. That’s how it achieves faster-than-typical confirmation times without using Lightning. The company hasn’t disclosed the specifics of this prioritization or how it affects fee dynamics during network congestion.
This vertical integration is both a strength and a potential concern. On the positive side, GoMining controls more of the stack than a pure software play would. On the negative side, merchants are depending on GoMining’s continued mining operations for the settlement guarantees the company promises. If GoMining’s hashrate share drops or the company faces financial trouble, the payment system’s performance could degrade.
The broader mining industry has been under pressure in recent months. Transaction fees spiked after the halving but have since normalized, squeezing miner revenue. Some smaller operations have shut down or consolidated. GoMining’s diversification into payments could be a hedge against pure mining economics, giving the company a second revenue stream tied to bitcoin’s utility rather than just its issuance schedule.
Second-Order Effects and What Comes Next
If GoBTC Pay gains traction, it could have ripple effects beyond GoMining itself. More merchants holding bitcoin rather than immediately selling creates a structural reduction in sell pressure. That’s bullish for price, assuming adoption reaches meaningful scale. It also increases the number of entities with a vested interest in bitcoin’s success, which tends to drive political and regulatory engagement.
There’s also the tax question. In the United States, every bitcoin transaction is technically a taxable event. A merchant who receives $100 worth of BTC and later sells it for $110 owes capital gains tax on the $10 gain. That’s true even if the merchant just wanted to pay rent. The GENIUS Act and other regulatory efforts may eventually simplify this, but for now, holding bitcoin adds accounting overhead that fiat-converting solutions eliminate.
GoMining’s initial 10-merchant pilot will be the first real test of whether the company’s thesis holds. If those businesses stick with the system and process meaningful volume, it validates the demand for BTC-native payment rails. If they quietly switch back to Square or BitPay, it suggests the market isn’t ready.
For traders watching bitcoin’s utility narrative, the merchant payment space is worth following. You can set price alerts through our alerts tool to track BTC moves around key levels. The 12-hour settlement window GoMining offers means merchants are effectively taking half-day positions on bitcoin’s price every time they make a sale. That’s a meaningful commitment.
Zalan’s closing comment to CoinDesk suggested he sees the competitive landscape clearly: “It’s to solve the real problems with BTC payments, the high and variable fees, the slow and unpredictable settlement, while preserving non-custody and onchain finality.”
Whether enough merchants share that priority remains the open question. The next few months will start answering it.
Related Reading
- What is Bitcoin? Beginner’s guide
- GENIUS Act: what it means for stablecoins
- Bitcoin news
- More on GoMining
- More on Bitcoin Payments
