#046 Irony, Inertia and Invisibility Cloaks
Dear Subscriber,
Yesterday, Square auto-enabled Bitcoin payments for its 4 million merchants via the Lightning Network. Zero processing fees through 2026.
Everyone’s covering the headline. Here are three things almost nobody is covering about what it means for Bitcoin adoption.
1. The irony
In the early days, Bitcoin was called the dirty payment network. 24 peer reviewed papers proved that to be factually incorrect, but it was once the dominant narrative anyway. Here’s the irony: because the payment networks nobody questions use mostly fossil fuel, Bitcoin is doing for payments what EVs did for transport: obviating coal and gas based electricity generation with a cleaner alternative. Let’s unpack how.
Visa and Mastercard run on the electrical grid. In the US and around the world, that grid is roughly 60% fossil fuel, which means every swipe, every tap, every contactless payment is powered predominantly by coal and gas.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network draws from a very different energy mix. According to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, 52.4% of Bitcoin mining now runs on sustainable energy, up from 37.6% in 2022, with coal dropping from 36.6% to just 8.9% over the same period. That makes the Bitcoin network a net promoter of sustainable energy. Equally importantly, close to 30% of Bitcoin mining operates off-grid, forming direct relationships with renewable operators whose energy would otherwise be wasted.
So when a customer pays via Lightning at a Square terminal, they’re settling on the lowest-emission payment network in existence. And as of today, that’s the default for 4 million merchants.
2. The inertia
This is the part the adoption trackers are missing.
When Square first unveiled “Square Bitcoin“ in October 2025, it was opt-in. Merchants had to find it, enable it and configure it. Adoption was predictably slow. Five months later, they flipped the default. Every Square merchant now has Bitcoin payments enabled unless they actively choose to turn it off.
This is the first time any major payment processor has done this. PayPal’s crypto features are opt-in. Stripe’s Bitcoin payouts are opt-in. Coinbase’s crypto payment option is opt-in. Shopify’s Bitcoin option is opt-in. Every single one requires the merchant to go looking for it. Square just reversed the polarity.
If you know anything about default settings in technology, you know what happens next.