Bitcoin Tagging

Help and support Tagging help & support
21

Is that a typo? I hope you meant your usage will be “currency:XBT”, right?

22

No, not a typo. :joy:

currency:XBT=yes shows that Bitcoin the currency is accepted. This is agreed.

We then need to decide how we tag the payment method. This is exactly how it is handled with other currencies with tags like payment:mastercard_contactless.

Bitcoin the asset and bitcoin the network are not the same.

A combination of the currency tag and the payment tag gives people all the information they need, regardless of currency.

So for Bitcoin, we either need to use something like:

payment:bitcoin=onchain;lightning;lightningnfc

OR a combination of the following:

payment:onchain:yes

payment:lightning:yes

payment:lightningnfc:yes or payment:lightning_contactless:yes to keep it aligned with the other contactless tags

My preference is for seperate payment tags as they can be combined with other currencies. e.g.

payment:onchain:yes makes sense for other cryptocurrencies.

payment:lightning:yes makes sense for other currencies more generally as you’ll soon be able to spend traditional fiat (USD, EUR) currencies over the Lightning Network with Taro. Lightning is entirely analogous to Visa in this regard as a payment processor.

What is your preference @tomFlowee ?

How do we get input from the wider OSM community?

payment:bitcoin:yes remains a popular legacy and can be interpreted as a combination of currency:XBT=yes + payment:onchain:yes given onchain was the only method of payment when most of those entries were made.

1 Like
23

I wrote my preference at least twice here, but it seems that since it basically states you should NOT tag payment networking, you don’t want to hear it.

I’ll write it again, shortly.

The Bitcoin tagging is and has been for years a mess. I very much welcome a cleanup, various mappers expect that there are a lot of places tagged as accepting it which no longer do. Stuff doesn’t seem to get maintained.

To start maintaining it sounds great, please do. Please update those tags, state they are accurate or delete them and change from the now years long deprecated tagging to the ‘currency’ tagging.

But you now suggest to not remove payment tags, but re-purpose it…
If you re-purpose an existing tag to now have different values, just because its deprecated, you will make a lot of consumers of this data not very happy. It might work for some, it likely will introduce bugs for others. Changes like this happen early or otherwise take a lot of time to communicate. Communication is hard, for instance I don’t feel that what I wrote is getting across. :frowning:

Again, join IRC or its Matrix bridge.

24

How do you feel about payment tagging for other currencies?

25

Payment systems are practically never exclusive to a single currency. Your Visa can be used to pay from a very large number of currencies. Take a look at the payments page, you’ll see that this is true for most.

Maybe you can comment on the repeated issue? That the dataset itself is in need of maintenance. That a lot of bitcoin POs are quite likely not accepting it anymore.

26

The data clean-up has already begun. There have been more deletions than anything else.

I’ve recruited several hundered people who will be taking responsibility for their local areas and I have the largest YouTube education channel in the BTC space lined-up to educate the masses.

We have to get some movement on this payment debate though. Bitcoiners want to know where they can spend Bitcoin over Lightning NFC for example. They might avoid places that are onchain only. EUR will come to Lightning one day.

1 Like
27

Hi,

I’ve recruited several hundered people who will be taking responsibility
for their local areas and I have the largest YouTube education channel
in the BTC space lined-up to educate the masses.

Please review our “organised editing guidelines” if you plan any
coordinated efforts in mapping on OSM, especially if you are bringing
people in who are new to OSM:
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines

We have to get some movement on this payment debate though. Bitcoiners
want to know where they can spend Bitcoin over Lightning NFC for
example. They might avoid places that are onchain only. EUR will come to
Lightning one day.

I maintain that Bitcoin is not relevant enough to warrant special
attention by OSM. As for Lightning, https://lwn.net/Articles/907366/
makes it sound as if it is just another Bitcoin fanboi thing to paper
over fundamental problems but hey, I guess if it makes you popular on
Youtube it must be great.

Bye
Frederik

4 Likes
28

I think it’s important to realise that the technologies involved with Bitcoin (e.g. lightning and contactless cards) are progressing very fast and are being very successfully deployed and used by merchants. I fully support tagging payment methods in addition to the currency tag. The only outstanding item being what is the best OSM tagging scheme.

bitcoin:payment:onchain:yes
bitcoin:payment:lightning:yes
bitcoin:payment:lightningnfc:yes

Is a good start.

  • Would you tag “bitcoin:payment:lightning:yes” where a merchant accepts lightningnfc but not lightning QR codes (yes I know it is rare) ?
  • Does there need to be another tag for an offline lnpos device like a vending machine ?
2 Likes
29

I think this is confusing (and syntactically incorrect) and as @tomFlowee highlights, re-purposes an existing tag, which is bad form. My preferences are clear in my last post.

No, I am suggesting:

currency:XBT=yes
payment:lightning_contactless=yes
payment:lightning=no

in that case.

I don’t think so for now, but we should stay flexible.

30

You are further ahead in your thinking on this. I’m happy to support your tag suggestions.

1 Like
31

I noticed that the visual editor supports payment tag but it doesn’t show currency tag, maybe that’s why people keep adding payment:bitcoin: the editor encourages it. Is it possible to hide that option from a drop-down or add some kind of warning to it?

Here is a canonical example :upside_down_face:: OpenStreetMap

1 Like
32

payment:lightning could be valid for Litecoin, too. How to distinguish the cryptocurrency?

My favourite suggestion in this thread so far was:

payment:xbt=onchain;lightning;lightningnfc

Whether it should be bitcoin, btc or xbt does not matter as long as we agree on one, in my opinion. Editors like iD should make it convenient to the mapper, thus if he/she enters bitcoin lightning in the payments field the correct tag should be added by the editor (works for multiple other values already).

33

The supported ‘crypto’ is done via the currency tag. e.g. currency:XBT=yes.

Granted this doesn’t link a specific currency to a specific payment method.

34

I’ve been thinking about all the arguments in this thread for a while and here is my current understanding:

  1. currency:XBT is not the best choice but it works. There is no point in changing it till we clean the legacy data set, and it would be trivial to change it to BTC in the future if there will be an agreement on that. I think someone mentioned it in this tread, and it’s not an unusual thing to do.
  2. We (btcmap.org communities) spent a lot of time and effort to improve the quality of the existing data set by re-verifying old places, adding more common use tags such as contact*, working_hours and so on. The rate of improvement is amazing, but some new mappers make mistakes and we monitor all of the changes closely to make sure we’re leaving the data set in the better shape than it was before our involvement. If you have any concerns, please let us know and we’ll do our best to address them.
  3. From my experience of checking hundreds of Bitcoin accepting places, It’s clear that an overwhelming majority of those places support Lightning Network. I don’t see a reason to add extra tags such us payment:lightning and so on, there is no other realistic way a cafe or a restaurant can accept bitcoins. Any scenario which involves waiting up to an hour to pay your bill is just a fantasy, no one does that in the real world.
  4. There are some exceptions, like car repair shops and other “slow” and relatively high value places which often gladly accept onchain payments, but those places are in the minority.
  5. Since LN is the expected way to accept retail Bitcoin payments, I see no reason to include any tags except for currency:XBT, for the majority of places.
  6. Since Bitcoin is kind of in the middle between a currency and a payment method, maybe it will be easier to stick with the single root tag and settle this thing once and for all? We already have an agreement on currency:XBT and we’re working hard to convert all the legacy tags, but it’ll take a while since we have a verification process.
  7. For those exceptional situations, we can extend currency:XBT instead of messing with the payment:* namespace. We can add explicit tags such as currency:XBT:onchain=yes and currency:XBT:lightning_contactless=yes and so on. Those places are rare exceptions, there is no point in polluting the rest of the places with those extra tags.
  8. Having a lot of tags makes life harder for other OSM contibutors who might want to verify them. It also complicates our onboarding process since we encourage local bitcoiners to contribute directly to OSM and some of them don’t have any prior OSM mapping experience. It’s much easier to tell them “just put or remove a currency:XBT tag and focus on learning common use OSM tags after that”. Having to deal with many bitcoin-specific tags is a mental burden and it doesn’t look justified except for the few exceptional cases I mentioned above.
  9. This approach can decrease the total number of tags quite dramatically without losing any valuable data.
35

Bitcoin discount tag?

I was wandering how to signal that the shops applies a discount if one pays in bitcoin, it is pretty popular around me (Bitcoin Valley).

36

Yea, many shops are offering discounts if you pay with bitcons, here is the latest one I surveyed in Malaysia a few days ago:

photo_5298703520058428853_y
photo_5298703520058428853_y964×1280 209 KB

I didn’t find any existing approaches, perhaps a tag like currency:XBT:discount = 5% would be sufficient. It can contain either X%, or a textual descripton of a promotion. It’s important to make sure it’s easily verifiable by any mapper, so having a physical sign or something is the best option.

1 Like
37

I’m a bit wary of tagging a specific discount, especially on POIs where we normally don’t tag the fee structure in great detail. Discount rates can change as easily as the prices. Can it be just a Boolean yes to say that you do get a discount?

This reminds me of the very common practice (in the U.S.) of offering a discount when paying by cash or, conversely, applying a surcharge when paying by credit card. Toll roads and gas stations often signpost these distinctions.

When this came up last year in OSMUS Slack, cash_discount=yes and credit_surcharge=yes were floated as possibilities. There’s currently a lightly used discount:*=yes/no tagging scheme that seems elegant for this purpose.

2 Likes
38

Yea, I guess it makes sense. Specific promotions aren’t durable enough to be tagged, and they might not fit the tag value length limit. A simple yes or no tag should be fine, there are plenty of common contact tags which can be used to add a website or socials where those promotions are usually already described, so there is no need to duplicate things and think on how to keep them in sync.

39

A discount amount is perhaps too specific, but the boolean should at least be applied at a currency level as that is the use case here.

40

In our local area it could be nice to know if the discount is a nice one > 10% or a small amount.

Could lead to different colors or icons in applications that map bitcoin venues around you. I tagged 2 venues with that. the " " before % or without could be a minor issue. e.g. “10 %” or “10%”

2 food/bar modified so far: Le radici, Piadinamore. One is 22%, the other 10%

45,8885120, 11,0447173

1 Like