Spiral, the bitcoin development team at Jack Dorsey’s Block, said on Oct. 27, 2026, that low demand was the main obstacle to widespread bitcoin payments. Its report, The Long Road to Bitcoin Payments, argues that payment infrastructure has improved substantially even as everyday use remains limited and major companies increasingly adopt stablecoins.

Spiral announced the report in a post on X and invited proposals for increasing adoption over the next five years.

The report cited a statement Dorsey made in January 2025: “If [bitcoin] ends up just being digital gold, I think it’s failed. If it ends up being a currency that people can use daily, then it’s succeeded.”

Spiral said Bitcoin’s payment infrastructure had improved significantly over the previous seven years. The Lightning Network is used in production products, non-custodial wallets have become easier to operate, and more than 1 million US merchants can accept bitcoin through Square. In 2025, Compass Coffee became the first cafe in the world to accept bitcoin payments through Square.

Despite those developments, bitcoin holders rarely spend the asset. “The gap is mostly demand, not technology,” the report’s authors said.

Stablecoins gain ground in payments

Spiral said the financial system was upgrading its payment infrastructure, but leading financial and technology companies were increasingly choosing stablecoins rather than bitcoin.

Shopify integrated USDC payments with Coinbase and Stripe in June 2025. Stripe acquired Bridge and is developing stablecoin-based payment and card services. Stripe, Visa, American Express, Google and other companies also backed the Open USD initiative announced in June 2026.

About 99% of payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol are made in USDC, according to the report. Google supports stablecoins through x402 in its Agent Payments Protocol, while Stripe is developing the Machine Payments Protocol for settlements between AI agents.

Spiral said AI agents require small, programmable payments, a use case suited to the Lightning Network. However, the first payment tools developed for those agents mostly use stablecoins and bank cards.

The report identified three main barriers to wider bitcoin payment adoption. Bitcoin holders largely treat the asset as savings, while merchants prefer to receive dollars, leaving businesses with little incentive to integrate bitcoin. Exchange-rate volatility complicates bitcoin pricing, while dollar stablecoins offer relatively stable value.

Taxes and regulation present another obstacle. In the US, spending bitcoin is treated as the sale of an asset and can create tax liabilities even for small purchases. Spiral also said uncertainty surrounding the CLARITY Act was holding back payment-service development.

Bitcoin nevertheless has advantages over stablecoins, the report said, including the absence of a centralized issuer, a fixed monetary policy and the ability to make payments without permission from intermediaries. For most users, however, price stability and ease of payment remain more important.

Proposals to increase bitcoin use

Spiral asked the community for large-scale proposals that could change bitcoin payment adoption rather than produce only incremental technical improvements.

One option would be shared payment infrastructure that uses the Lightning Network to transfer both bitcoin and dollars or stablecoins across applications, online stores and AI-agent payment systems. Spiral also proposed non-custodial payment services for people in countries facing currency controls, high inflation or unstable currencies.

Other proposals include discounts and rewards for paying with bitcoin, coupled with research into whether users continue making bitcoin payments after those incentives end. The report also suggested micropayments to content creators, per-request payments for AI services and continuous settlement based on the time customers spend using services.

Spiral called for research into what would be required to integrate bitcoin payments into major platforms such as Meta, Shopify or OpenAI. The team did not claim that any of the proposals would guarantee mass adoption.

The report also considered an alternative path in which bitcoin first becomes established as a store of value and only later develops into an everyday currency. Under that scenario, payment demand would increase gradually, including as volatility declines.

Spiral opened a discussion on GitHub and invited developers, payment companies and investors to submit ideas, statistics and results from experiments.

Source: Incrypted