The genesis story of BTCPay Server is definitely one of the iconic moments in Bitcoin historical past. A single developer, feeling betrayed by Bitpay, a bitcoin funds processing big and its attempt at co-opting Bitcoin, declared financial struggle on the corporate in a tweet that can by no means be forgotten by the Bitcoin trade; “This is lies, my trust in you is broken, I will make you obsolete.”
Nicolas Dorier went on to create one of the broadly distributed open supply tasks within the Bitcoin trade and maybe the invoicing and funds trade as a complete: BTCPay Server. A lot has been written in regards to the context and motivation behind Dorier’s founding of the venture — there’s even a documentary about it.
What’s seldom highlighted is how formidable a venture BTCPay Server is, how feature-rich it has turn into and the way deeply built-in it’s with the trade. In actual fact, it’s straightforward to overlook that as an open supply venture with no centralized database of customers, BTCPay Server is each a large privateness improve for its customers and represents the removing of a basic intermediary processing funds. In consequence, Dorier and the BTCPay Server neighborhood have created a public items infrastructure — a type of commons of fee processing — that gives customers actual worth by saving them charges, and offering them a a lot smoother person expertise on condition that no private info is required for the funds to circulation.
Humbly described on their web site as “a self-hosted, open-source cryptocurrency fee processor,” BTCPay Server is an invoicing and accounting system for retailers, a totally featured Bitcoin pockets with full node capabilities; on-chain, Lightning Community and Liquid Community help; {hardware} pockets help; and a modular plugin system. The plugins particularly lengthen the core of BTCPay Server into a variety of niches. Additionally they combine into e-commerce giants akin to WooCommerce and Shopify.
It’s considerably troublesome to gauge the success and scope of BTCPay Server. As a result of it’s a self-hosted platform that doesn’t seize buyer information of any sort — it has no central cloud service as different fee processors do — our view into its success is considerably restricted.
Nevertheless, we are able to get a way of their attain by proxy of different metrics, for instance, their major software program repository has had over 170 open source contributors, with 8,393 commits on the time of writing.
As of 2025, BTCPay Server has had one million downloads straight from its GitHub repository, which doesn’t account for cloud suppliers of the software program as hosted by firms like Voltage or Lunanode. It’s also typically the case that one occasion of BTCPay Server serves a number of retailers and hosts a number of shops concurrently.
R0ckstardev, one of many prime contributors to the venture, instructed Bitcoin Journal that there may very well be a whole lot of 1000’s of situations of BTCPay Server operating all through the world. Tobe Chileta, a contributor to the venture, additionally instructed Bitcoin Journal that “of the seven continents of the world, I feel it’s only Antarctica that I haven’t seen somebody run BTCPay server.” He added, “I’m sure we’ve retailers operating in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Australia.”
Corporations
BTCPay Server’s web site enterprise directory, whereas removed from exhaustive, covers a whole lot of retailers onboarded. The BTCPay Server neighborhood additionally does common case research of person cohorts or main retailers that use the software program, documenting their integration and story of their case studies page. It offers unbelievable insights into a wide range of Bitcoin communities all through the world and consists of helpful guides on replicate varied outcomes and implementations.
Namecheap, for instance, boasted over 70 million dollars’ of bitcoin quantity since their integration of BTCPay Server. From Could 18, 2020, to October 2024 they clocked in 1.1m transactions in whole with over 500,000 customers paying in bitcoin, leading to over $73 million in income by funds comprised of over 200 nations.
BTC Inc, the father or mother firm of the largest Bitcoin convention on the planet, has for years been organising BTCPay Server for its retailers, and even has a one-hour behind-the-scenes documentary on the complexities of organising dozens of retailers at a convention (filmed throughout the Nashville 2024 Bitcoin convention). The occasion noticed over 25,000 attendees, together with the forty seventh president of the U.S., Donald J. Trump.
On this most up-to-date Bitcoin 2025 convention in Las Vegas, BTCPay Server was used to course of a brand new world report of Bitcoin transactions inside an eight-hour period, with 4,187 transactions in whole. The preliminary goal was 4,000 transactions and was set by the Guinness World Information group.
Integrations and Plugins
One of the crucial necessary dimensions of BTCPay Server is its plugin system. Given the wide range of the way firms can work together with Bitcoin, the developer neighborhood has optimized the BTCPay Server code towards a plugin mannequin that builders can construct for with a well-documented set of GitHub repos and an API. At present there are over 30 plugins accessible on BTCPay Server. Listed below are a number of the best hits:
Boltz Swap Change Plugin
Boltz is an atomic swap change centered on the varied Bitcoin layers akin to Liquid, Lightning, Rootstock and naturally Bitcoin on-chain. It has gained prominence of late as a quite simple resolution to the channel rebalancing challenges Lightning wallets face. R0ckstardev instructed Bitcoin Journal that he’s notably impressed with the Boltz integration, and even tweeted as a lot earlier this 12 months.
Branded as a noncustodial Bitcoin Bridge, Boltz permits customers to swap between totally different Bitcoin layers whereas retaining most management of their funds, utilizing atomic swap expertise that eliminates third-party belief throughout crypto-native funds. For instance, you should use Boltz by way of BTCPay Server to make a Lightning fee, the place the sats are initially held at relaxation in a Liquid community pockets and are pulled from that steadiness by the Boltz plugin. The L-BTC is atomically swapped for sats on the Lightning Community by way of the Boltz change and the satoshis circulation to the tip recipient. This complete course of is successfully noncustodial.
This is similar sort of “lightning service supplier” model infrastructure with which Breez wallet recently announced integration. Whereas it isn’t fairly as low cost as a user-operated Lightning node might be in one of the best of circumstances, it’s far simpler to arrange and run — solely demanding a number of clicks on the BTCPay Server interface. So far as BTCPay Server is anxious, this Boltz plugin represents a full Lightning node, integrating natively with the invoicing and accounting layers.
This tech additionally scales fairly effectively: One BTCPay Server admin can help many various retailers and never even need to run or handle a normal Lightning node, for the reason that plugin helps automated liquidity administration.
The Bolt Playing cards Plugin
The Bolt card, an organization and product created by the Coincenter change, has come into prominence lately due to its distinctive graphics and the laser-eyes that mild up on tap-to-pay. They, too, have a BTCPay Server plugin that lets customers handle and join these cool NFC playing cards to their wallets by way of the plugin.
Bolt playing cards are NFC tap-to-pay gadgets that perform like debit playing cards. Customers could make bitcoin funds in individual with the identical tap-to-pay expertise delivered by Visa and Mastercard, although with way more privateness since bankcards transmit your title and full card particulars with each fee whereas Lightning customers have the potential to pay straight from their very own Lightning nodes and with out personally figuring out info required for funds to course of.
The Bolt card plugin in BTCPay Server is pretty easy, permitting customers to arrange, reset and examine the steadiness of their Bolt playing cards, permitting customers to spend straight from their BTCPay Server-integrated Lightning nodes.
Ghost running a blog suite
Ghost, a popular open supply running a blog tech stack has lately built-in with BTCPay by way of a plugin, letting customers settle for donations and paywall content material. The mixing covers all types of media codecs and helps a drained membership for unique content material, akin to Patreon however with bitcoin.
Nostr Assist
Nostr can also be integrated as a plugin, which unlocks interactivity with that complete ecosystem. The plugin helps person account verification as a substitute for managing a person database and might help zaps and Lightning funds by way of Nostr Pockets Join.
Satoshi Tickets
Satoshi Tickets is an event ticket management system, an instance of the depth of tooling supported by BTCPay Server plugins and the potential it unlocks. The ticket system is in fact absolutely built-in with the invoicing and funds accounting layer, letting occasion companies settle for bitcoin and fiat funds with the assistance of different plugins and API.
Prism
BTCPay Server has discovered a dependable area of interest in Bitcoin conferences, the place retailers are sometimes inspired to simply accept bitcoin as fee and are keen to be onboarded to new applied sciences. The suggestions ensuing from many such exams is that retailers want greenback stability to at the very least cowl their prices, and that is the place the Prism plugin is available in. Prism allows the splitting of sats flow to totally different pockets of values, permitting retailers to auto convert, say, 80% of their income to USDT by way of an change like Sideshift, maintaining the remaining 20% in bitcoin.
This sort of expertise is crucial for cashflow-heavy companies which have very predictable bills and might’t abdomen the volatility danger. The income nonetheless can simply keep in BTC in the event that they so select.
Money Plugin
There’s even a Cash plugin that helps money funds utilizing BTCPay Server because the invoicing suite. It helps a variety of fiat currencies, a key characteristic for brick-and-mortar companies that don’t serve the Bitcoin market primarily.
Podserver
Even podcasters who signify a major and important portion of the Bitcoin neighborhood can arrange self-host podcasting 2.0 streaming by way of BTCPay Server with a dedicated plugin.
Supporters
BTCPay Server is supported by varied philanthropic and for-profit organizations by grants and donations akin to Opensats, the Human Rights Basis, Spiral and Tether, amongst others. Particular person contributors are sponsored at instances to do particular or basic work, whereas a BTCPay Server nonprofit basis has additionally been set as much as deal with conventional donations and distribute them to the contributors on a case-by-case foundation.
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