Rovigo is a small industrial town south of Venice. It's big enough to be a node in the high-speed train system. I had never heard about Rovigo before noticing it on BTCMap, and although I couldn't find anybody around me who had been, I decided to go. Usually when I share these trip reports they are full of great experiences and wonderful Bitcoin stories, but I feel I should share the misadventures here, too.
There are thirty merchants marked as accepting Lightning payments in Rovigo. Most of them have been verified less than twelve months ago, almost all of them by the same user. Looking at the BTCMap Github issues, it seems they were all submitted through the BTCMap web form, where the "supertagger" contacted them by email. The business owners must have replied to these emails, and the stores were added. There are multiple stores that did not reply, or replied negatively, and were not added.
Of the 30 merchants:
- I visited 21 merchants
- 3 were permanently closed
- 12 merchants were temporarily closed (Mondays are terrible days to explore Italy)
- 6 merchants said they did not take Bitcoin. Some even stressed they had never heard of it or didn't know what it was)
Given these results, I allowed myself to remove all 30 merchants from BTCMap. I didn't see a single Bitcoin sticker or reference in town either. I don't know quite what the issue was here, maybe somebody from the town doesn't know how BTCMap works? I have in the past met people who thought the form was some kind "request for orange pill." Maybe merchants should only be marked as verified if a supertagger shows up in person?
I also joined the local Satoshi Spritz group, but it had only ~25 members and nobody answered any of my messages, neither in Italian nor English. If you're from Rovigo, please comment below or reach out!