Gomining, one of the world's top 10 Bitcoin mining firms with 5 million users, introduced GoBTC at Consensus Miami 2026—an open payment protocol designed to deliver instant authorization and 12-hour on-chain settlement for Bitcoin transactions, with a fixed merchant fee of just 0.2%. This is drastically lower than the 1.5%-3.5% fees charged by traditional card processors.
How GoBTC Works
GoBTC is a non-custodial, user-free payment infrastructure. Merchants pay a flat 0.2% fee, which is split equally between wallet providers and Bitcoin miners. Any wallet provider can integrate the protocol, and Gomining dedicates a specialized mining pool to confirm GoBTC transactions, ensuring exclusive block space without competing with regular Bitcoin traffic. The company aims for full 12-hour on-chain settlement across the system by end of 2026. At the point of sale, GoBTC provides instant authorization (transactions recorded in real-time), followed by final settlement on the Bitcoin base layer using a sidechain, payment channel, or intermediary custodian routing. Gomining's mining infrastructure absorbs the settlement delay.
Why Now?
Bitcoin's whitepaper, published over 17 years ago, envisioned a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system." Yet only about 2,300 businesses in the U.S. directly accept Bitcoin, despite 22% of American adults holding it. The Lightning Network, launched in 2018 as a solution, took seven years to reach $1 billion in monthly capacity, processing $1.17 billion in November 2025 and over 12 million monthly transactions by 2026. However, its routing complexity and limited merchant adoption have hindered widespread use. GoBTC bets on a different architecture: direct on-chain settlement using Bitcoin's block confirmation mechanism, with Gomining's mining infrastructure absorbing latency. Whether this model can surpass earlier integrations depends on wallet provider adoption and merchant response to the authorize-before-settlement timing.
For Gomining, the launch marks a strategic expansion from mining-as-a-service into payment infrastructure—betting that the firm best positioned to confirm Bitcoin transactions is also best positioned to settle them.