In-person businesses accepting bitcoin nearly tripled in 2023

Looking for a place to spend your bitcoin in real life? It may be easier than ever, according to BTC Map’s crowdsourced data. The project currently lists over 6,300 vendors that accepted bitcoin in the past year, according to user reports.

That total is nearly three times more than the number of vendors who accepted bitcoin at the end of 2022 — only 2,200, according to BTC Map’s data. While some vendors have almost certainly been missed by the volunteers contributing data, the trend seems to indicate that bitcoin adoption is on the rise, despite its volatile swings in price throughout 2023.

However, paying for physical goods with bitcoin could be a risky proposition. The bitcoin used to buy a $20 pizza at the beginning of 2023, for example, would be worth over $50. Infamously, the first purchase made with Bitcoin were two large pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin that would be worth $44 million at today’s prices.

Bitcoin vendors are located around the world, but appear to be concentrated in Europe, the United States, and especially Latin America. While the Phillippines has hundreds of vendors tagged, East Asia seems to be lagging in adoption, with China’s population of over 1.4 billion lacking any vendors, due to the cryptocurrency ban in the country.

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