Gomining Launches GoBTC at Consensus Miami, Targeting Bitcoin’s Long-Awaited Payments Layer
Key Takeaways: GoBTC is open infrastructure meaning that any wallet provider can integrate the protocol, and Gomining is dedicating a specific mining pool to confirming GoBTC transactions, giving the payment layer dedicated block space without competing with standard bitcoin traffic. The company is targeting full 12-hour onchain settlement across the system by the end of 2026. Bitcoin’s whitepaper, published 17 years ago, described the network as a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” By most measures, that vision has remained elusive in daily commerce because in the U.S., only around 2,300 businesses accept bitcoin directly, despite 22% of American adults owning it. The Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s primary payment layer, introduced in 2018 to solve this, took seven years to reach $1 billion in monthly volume. And, while Lightning has since made genuine progress, processing $1.17 billion in volume in November 2025 and over 12 million monthly transactions as of 2026, its routing complexity and limited merchant adoption have kept widespread use at bay. GoBTC takes a different architectural bet wherein it settles directly onchain using Bitcoin’s block confirmation mechanism, with Gomining’s mining infrastructure absorbing the settlement latency. Whether the model scales past early integrations will depend on wallet provider uptake and how merchants respond to authorization-before-settlement timing. For Gomining, the launch marks an expansion beyond its mining-as-a-service roots into the payments infrastructure layer, a bet that the company best positioned to confirm Bitcoin transactions is also the one best placed to settle them.Why Now?
About Author
