Bitcoin’s inability to function as a simple, everyday payment method—like buying a cup of coffee—remains the single biggest barrier to its next stage of growth, according to Mark, CEO of GoMining. While the asset has ETFs, institutional holders, and a U.S. Strategic Reserve, the experience for merchants and users at the checkout counter is still too clunky for mass adoption.
Mark, whose company is one of the top ten Bitcoin miners by hash power, argues that layer 2 solutions like Lightning have consistently failed because they rely on infrastructure and incentives outside Bitcoin’s base layer. The result: unpredictable fees, settlement uncertainty, and a poor user experience. GoMining’s answer is a native instant payment protocol at layer 1, which it will announce at Consensus 2026. Transactions are authorized instantly through a multi‑signature wallet, held against the user’s balance, and then batched into Bitcoin blocks that GoMining itself mines.
The protocol’s economics are made possible by the company’s mining scale—mining two to four blocks per day—which lets it set fees at any level it chooses. Users enjoy zero fees permanently, while merchants pay just 0.2%, a fraction of the 2.5–3.5% charged by card networks. Half of that fee goes back to the wallet provider, creating an incentive for adoption. Lugano, Switzerland, where crypto tax payments are already accepted, is an early test market.
Meanwhile, the broader crypto‑payments industry is grappling with a parallel problem: checkout friction. When users must copy long wallet addresses, switch apps, and manually select networks, drop‑off rates surge. A new generation of “connect‑and‑confirm” protocols is rapidly replacing the old copy‑paste model. By integrating directly with a user’s native Web3 wallet, payment pages trigger a pre‑configured approval prompt—no manual data entry required. This approach, showcased by platforms like Match2Pay, promises the same seamless experience as a saved card, unlocking higher conversion rates and lower support costs for merchants.
