GoMining is rolling out GoBTC, a Bitcoin-native payments protocol the company will unveil at the Consensus conference. Presented as a lower-cost alternative to Visa and Mastercard, GoBTC leans on GoMining’s control of a meaningful share of Bitcoin hash rate to offer faster, cheaper checkout and settlement.
The protocol promises instant authorization at point of sale and settlement directly on the Bitcoin mainnet within a few hours, relying on on-chain confirmations rather than card-network clearing and batch settlement. Merchants would pay a 0.2% processing fee — substantially below the typical 1.5%–3.5% merchants face once interchange, assessment, and processor markups are included.
GoMining frames miner-run rails as especially well suited for payments built on mainnet because miners already collect block rewards and can monetize block space and transaction servicing. Forbes reported the company calls GoBTC “a protocol only GoMining can run,” a description that implies the design may depend on proprietary coordination with GoMining’s blocks or a preferred set of mining pools to deliver consistent settlement and fee behavior.
A headline rate of 0.2% compresses the traditional fee stack and leaves less room for intermediaries, but it also shifts significant risk and cost onto GoMining’s infrastructure and block-production economics. To make the model work within that narrow margin the firm would need to absorb fraud losses, volatility in on-chain fees and bitcoin price, and ongoing operational expenses.
If scaled, GoBTC could put pressure on existing crypto payment gateways (which often charge roughly 0.5%–1%) and on legacy card processors that depend on multi-percent fee stacks. Industry observers note that card fees are a persistent merchant pain point, and a reliable, on-chain option at a fraction of current costs would represent a credible challenge to the status quo. That competitive pressure is unfolding alongside continuing regulatory and merchant scrutiny of card fees — highlighted by recent multibillion-dollar settlements involving Visa and Mastercard — and helps explain renewed interest in routing payments over Bitcoin instead of legacy rails.