Bitcoin BTC — the first peer-to-peer digital currency
A public ledger, mined by proof-of-work, settling pseudonymous payments without a bank in the middle.
A pseudonymous peer-to-peer digital currency launched in January 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Transactions are recorded on a public, append-only ledger (the blockchain), secured by proof-of-work mining, and validated by an open network of full nodes. Pseudonymous, not anonymous — every transaction is publicly traceable by address.
Bitcoin is the rail most of you already have.
A no-KYC host has to settle on payment rails that do not require KYC of their own. Card-processor money is out: every major acquirer demands a legal entity, a beneficial-owner declaration and a customer-identification programme. Bank wire works for one-off enterprise sums but is operationally hopeless for a €9 monthly invoice. Cryptocurrency is what is left, and Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency the largest number of customers actually hold.
We accept native on-chain BTC and we accept Lightning. The on-chain path is the right choice for larger invoices, annual prepayments and customers who want a public proof-of-payment for accounting. Lightning is the right choice for top-ups, monthly renewals and any payment under a couple of hundred dollars where saving a fee and a wait of half an hour is worth it.
The privacy profile of a Bitcoin payment is whatever you bring to it. If your coins came from a regulated exchange under your legal name, the link to that name is encoded in the chain forever; if they came from a peer-to-peer marketplace, a self-hosted Lightning channel or an atomic swap from Monero, it is not. We do not run chain-analysis on inbound payments and we do not retain the source address beyond the period needed for accounting.
The pages that lean on this term.
The questions people actually ask.
Is Bitcoin anonymous?
No — Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Every transaction is permanently recorded on a public ledger, and chain-analysis firms specialise in clustering addresses, tagging exchanges and linking deposits to KYC'd accounts. If you buy BTC on a regulated exchange with your real name and send it directly to a hosting invoice, the chain of custody is trivial to follow. Real anonymity on Bitcoin requires deliberate effort: peer-to-peer acquisition, CoinJoin, or a swap to a privacy coin.
How long does a Bitcoin payment take to confirm?
On the base layer, blocks arrive roughly every ten minutes, and most merchants wait for one to six confirmations — call it ten minutes to one hour for routine sums. For instant settlement at the price of a few satoshis, use the Lightning Network, which finalises off-chain payments in seconds without waiting for a block.
Why does NordBastion accept Bitcoin if Monero is more private?
Because Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency the largest number of people already hold, and because Lightning makes it cheap and fast enough for VPS invoices. We accept both: BTC and Lightning for reach and convenience, Monero for customers who want default-private payment without an extra hop.
Do I have to give my legal name to pay an invoice in Bitcoin?
Not to us. We never ask. Whatever identity exists on your end of the transaction — at the exchange where you bought the coins, in the wallet software you use — is your concern and not part of the payment we receive. We see an inbound transfer to a payment address, and we credit the invoice.