Salvadoran Roxana Reyes works as a cashier in a warehouse that receives payments and transactions in bitcoin in Berlin, El Salvador on January 20, 2025. Bitcoin enthusiasts seeking to turn a mountain town in El Salvador into a cryptocurrency haven hope that US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House will boost their cause. (Photo by Marvin RECINOS / AFP) (Photo by MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images)
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Bitcoin’s rise in price has given it the attention it deserves as a store of value. For a decade, Bitcoin has been the world’s best-performing financial asset. Its’ 21 million supply cap positions it well to continue acting as a buffer against inflation.
Yet another critical aspect of money is its use as a medium of exchange — the day-to-day use of money to exchange goods and services. Think of the currency that you hold in your hand, and the ability to go to any nearby shop and buy what you wish.
Traditionally, Bitcoin has struggled with this aspect. Most solutions revolve around selling gift cards or other forms of currency in exchange for Bitcoin, which is a clunky way to address this gap.
There are pockets where Bitcoin has density – for example, online on networks like Nostr, and in particular online services, especially those that are more privacy-focused, such as Proton, Mullvad VPN, and LNVPN. The one country that has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, El Salvador, has seen notable adoption, with many merchants accepting Bitcoin. However, the law has had a mixed reception and has not been enforced consistently. There is also an irony in admitting that a nation-state could help force the adoption of Bitcoin, an open-source monetary network that prides itself on voluntary principles.
Now, however, two forces are helping push Bitcoin adoption as a medium of exchange. One is the adoption of Bitcoin by merchants. More physical merchants are accepting Bitcoin, as shown on BTCMap, a company that utilizes open-source mapping to track which merchants currently accept Bitcoin. There are now increasingly areas where you can live on Bitcoin and exchange it for most of your daily needs.
The fight is on for merchants. Some of the most successful payment apps of our time have relied on merchant adoption to outperform their competitors—witness Alipay and WeChat Pay in China, as well as the payment standards they aim to export globally. In the United States, Square was a classic success story of taking an iPhone and adding hardware that could easily process payments – creating and spurring merchant adoption and tooling. Square is now enabling Lightning integrations, putting that power to use for the Bitcoin Network.
There is also the rise of circular economies, which combine local Bitcoin meetups and a community centered on gathering to spend Bitcoin. Members of that economy will tend to offer services and goods priced in Bitcoin and trade with one another in Bitcoin. There is a growing drive to pay and accept salaries in Bitcoin as well. These hubs are around the world, with some in Uganda and some as far apart as Vancouver.
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In Vancouver, Canada, there are more than a hundred merchants in the area that accept Bitcoin directly, using solutions such as locally built coinos. The merchants range from tanning salons to a gym to multiple barbers. A selection of restaurants and cafes accept Bitcoin, and you can purchase everything from ice cream to sandwiches.
Community organizer of the Vancouver BitDevs meetup, Leo Weese, opines that “Vancouver is not a special place. We’re not secluded, don’t suffer from extraordinarily high inflation, financial repression, or have a high concentration of Bitcoin companies. If a circular Bitcoin economy can flourish here, it can flourish anywhere in North America.”
In Uganda, you can pay to see gorillas entirely in Bitcoin. There is a tour company that takes Bitcoin, as well as a juice company. And it doesn’t just extend to tourism – a local orphanage supporting 77 orphans has adopted Bitcoin and raised more than 40 million satoshis, an amount that roughly corresponds to approximately $25,000 USD as of September 2025. The capital of Kampala hosts businesses and a school that is adopting Bitcoin education, with 115 children in one school.
A fund for circular economies in Africa exists for Bitcoin (the Circular Bitcoin Africa Fund) to spur this growth across the continent, where circular economies for Bitcoin are popping up from Zambia to South Africa to beyond. As of September 2025, at least nine countries in Africa had established a circular Bitcoin economy hub. In May 2025, the fund was supporting approximately 24 grassroots projects across Africa that utilized Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. Projects like Bitcoin Babies provide mothers with newborns under the age of one with extra money through Bitcoin, which can be exchanged for goods and services with local merchants that accept Bitcoin.
As Brindon Mwiine, the organizer of Bitcoin Kampala and the owner of several local businesses that accept Bitcoin, put it: “Africa needs Bitcoin, and Bitcoin needs Africa. The medium of exchange aspect is definitely much more on the continent than I think elsewhere.”
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As the twin pillars of circular Bitcoin economies and the rising amount of merchants adopting Bitcoin build, Bitcoin itself is poised to break the narrative that it only serves as a store of value, but rather a money in its fullest sense, used by people to trade goods and services with each other as a medium of exchange. It is a trend well worth observing as Bitcoin’s ascent as money continues.