Gomining, a top-10 bitcoin mining firm with five million users, debuted GoBTC at Consensus Miami 2026 — an open payment protocol offering merchants instant transaction authorization and full onchain settlement on Bitcoin's base layer within 12 hours. The flat merchant fee stands at 0.2%, split evenly between wallet providers and miners.
How GoBTC Works: Non-Custodial, No Middlemen
GoBTC bypasses sidechains, payment channels, or custodial intermediaries, settling directly on Bitcoin's main chain. Users pay nothing; merchants absorb the 0.2% fee. For context, conventional card processors charge 1.5% to 3.5% per transaction. The protocol is open infrastructure — any wallet can integrate it. Gomining is dedicating a specific mining pool to confirm GoBTC transactions, carving out dedicated block space separate from regular bitcoin traffic. The company targets end of 2026 for full 12-hour settlement across the system.
Why Now? Bitcoin's Original Payments Vision Still Unfulfilled
Bitcoin's whitepaper, published 17 years ago, envisioned a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system." In practice, only about 2,300 merchants in the U.S. accept bitcoin directly, while 22% of American adults own it. The Lightning Network, Bitcoin's primary payment layer, took seven years to reach $1 billion in monthly volume — hitting $1.17 billion in November 2025 with over 12 million monthly transactions. Yet routing complexity and limited merchant adoption have kept it from mainstream use.
GoBTC takes a different bet: settle onchain directly using Bitcoin's block confirmation mechanism, with Gomining's mining infrastructure absorbing settlement latency. Whether the model scales beyond early integrations depends on wallet provider uptake and merchant response to authorization-before-settlement timing. For Gomining, the launch marks a pivot from mining-as-a-service into payments infrastructure — a bet that the firm best positioned to confirm Bitcoin transactions is also the one best placed to settle them.