At the Consensus Miami 2026 conference, Gomining — one of the top 10 Bitcoin miners globally, serving over 5 million users — launched GoBTC, an open, non-custodial payment protocol designed to give Bitcoin the payments layer it has long been promised. The protocol enables merchants to authorize transactions instantly and settle them on-chain within 12 hours, with a flat fee of just 0.2% — far below the 1.5%–3.5% charged by traditional credit card processors.
What Is GoBTC?
GoBTC is a payment protocol built directly on Bitcoin’s base layer. Unlike the Lightning Network, it does not rely on sidechains, payment channels, or custodial intermediaries. Instead, settlement happens directly on the Bitcoin blockchain using standard block confirmation mechanisms. When a customer pays with a GoBTC-enabled wallet, the merchant receives instant authorization in real time, while the on-chain settlement finalizes within 12 hours. The 0.2% merchant fee is split equally between wallet providers and Bitcoin miners; users pay nothing.
The protocol is open infrastructure: any wallet provider can integrate GoBTC. Gomining dedicates a proprietary mining pool to confirm GoBTC transactions, ensuring dedicated block space that does not compete with regular Bitcoin traffic. The company aims for full 12-hour on-chain settlement across the entire system by end of 2026.
Why Now?
Bitcoin’s whitepaper, published over 17 years ago, described a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” Yet adoption for everyday commerce remains minimal: only about 2,300 businesses in the U.S. directly accept Bitcoin, despite 22% of American adults holding it. The Lightning Network, introduced in 2018 as the primary payments layer, took seven years to reach $1 billion in monthly volume. By November 2025, Lightning processed $1.17 billion in volume and over 12 million monthly transactions from 2026 onward. Still, its routing complexity and limited merchant acceptance have hindered broad uptake.
GoBTC takes a different architectural approach: settlement is on-chain but leverages Gomining’s mining infrastructure to absorb latency. Whether the model scales beyond early integrations depends on adoption by wallet providers and how merchants respond to the pre-settlement authorization window.
Competing with Lightning and Traditional Finance
The 0.2% fee structure undercuts not only credit cards but also most Lightning node routing fees. While Lightning excels at micro-transactions, it requires users to lock funds and manage channels. GoBTC simplifies the user experience: no pre-funding, no channel management, and merchants get instant authorization backed by Bitcoin’s own security. The 12-hour finality may not suit every scenario (e.g., instant delivery of digital goods), but Gomining believes for most e-commerce and retail, authorization is sufficient to execute the order.
For Gomining, the launch marks a strategic pivot from mining-as-a-service into payments infrastructure. The company’s bet: the entity best positioned to confirm Bitcoin transactions is also the best positioned to settle them.