Substack to Accept Bitcoin Payments for Subscription to Cryptocurrency-Related Publications

Cryptocurrencies have slowly begun to make their way into markets and be accepted as modes of payment in place of fiat currency. The latest startup to jump on to the bandwagon is the online publishing platform Substack. In an announcement made on Monday, August 23, Bitcoin payment processor OpenNode announced their partnership with Substack that has over 5,00,000 paid newsletter subscribers. It said it has integrated its application programming interface (API) to accept Bitcoin as payment for select crypto-related publications. OpenNode will allow both on-chain and Lightning Network Bitcoin payments on the publishing platform.

Substack and OpenNode will work together to make the option for quick and cost-effective payments available to subscribers who are solely interested in crypto-related publications on their platform. All readers will be able to subscribe and make payments using Bitcoin to select publications. The publishers will be able to retain their earnings in Bitcoin itself. Bitcoin price in India was around Rs. 38 lakhs on August 24.

In a tweet, Substack said that they had “enabled Bitcoin payments, beginning with select crypto publications”.

In a subsequent tweet, the company termed this as an early experiment, and stated that the “option is not yet available to all publishers”, and added that it was “looking forward to exploring broader availability based on the feedback and demand”.

In a press release, Nick Inzucchi, Product Designer at Substack said, “We’re excited to be working with OpenNode to enable independent publishers on Substack to accept crypto payments.” Adding further, “Having this option will give writers more flexibility and freedom, and we look forward to doing more in crypto to meet writers’ needs.”

Joao Almeida, Co-Founder and CTO at OpenNode, said, “Our partnership will allow content creators across the Substack ecosystem to accept Bitcoin payments, and retain earnings in Bitcoin or convert to preferred currency. Writers and podcasters have flocked to Substack to regain creative and financial freedom, and Bitcoin is a natural fit.”

Cryptocurrency is being accepted as a payment option in many places across the world. Recently, over 85,000 merchants in Switzerland said that they would accept cryptocurrency as payment from their customers and have collaborated with Worldline, a French payment and transactional services company, and Bitcoin Suisse, a crypto-financial services company in Switzerland.

In India, the cryptocurrency market is neither legal nor illegal. Select companies and restaurants have offered customers the option to make payments for their products using cryptocurrency.

Suryawanshi Restaurants in Bengaluru, Karnataka accepts payments in Bitcoin. A home decor brand in Delhi, The Rug Republic, too, accepts cryptocurrency as payment for their products.