The Berlín / El Salvador data point is actually more durable than most circular-economy claims because it's been observed continuously for ~3 years across multiple researchers (https://galoy.io, tourism interviews, on-chain analysis of Wallet of Satoshi inflows in that geofence). The base rate for "circular economy" pilots that survive past 18 months without external grant funding is roughly 0.
What separates Berlín from the other 200+ "Bitcoin towns" announced since 2021: (a) Lightning-first not on-chain, so fees don't kill micro-transactions, (b) at least one anchor merchant who pays staff in BTC creating recurring sat velocity, (c) a local dev community fixing UX bugs in real-time. Without any one of those three, the loop breaks within a quarter.
Block's stack announcement is interesting because Square's 5% BTC-back is the first time a major US payment processor turns the merchant side of every transaction into a buy order at scale. If retention plays out the way Cash App's P2P-to-BTC conversion has, that's a structurally different demand source than retail spot buying.
The Berlín / El Salvador data point is actually more durable than most circular-economy claims because it's been observed continuously for ~3 years across multiple researchers (https://galoy.io, tourism interviews, on-chain analysis of Wallet of Satoshi inflows in that geofence). The base rate for "circular economy" pilots that survive past 18 months without external grant funding is roughly 0.
What separates Berlín from the other 200+ "Bitcoin towns" announced since 2021: (a) Lightning-first not on-chain, so fees don't kill micro-transactions, (b) at least one anchor merchant who pays staff in BTC creating recurring sat velocity, (c) a local dev community fixing UX bugs in real-time. Without any one of those three, the loop breaks within a quarter.
Block's stack announcement is interesting because Square's 5% BTC-back is the first time a major US payment processor turns the merchant side of every transaction into a buy order at scale. If retention plays out the way Cash App's P2P-to-BTC conversion has, that's a structurally different demand source than retail spot buying.