The Vetted Index — Edition 1, August 2026

Edition 1 · published 29 August 2026 · dataset version 1.3

The Vetted Index is a dated, source-checked record of whether named luxury brands accept
cryptocurrency. This page is its first numbered edition: a fixed, citable statement of what
the register held on the day it was published. The full, filterable table lives at
The Vetted Index; this edition exists
so that anyone quoting a figure can quote a version of it that will not move
underneath them.

What this edition holds

Edition 1 records 101 entries across 15 categories:
25 verified against a first-party source, 72 unverified,
and 4 indirect — where settlement runs through a broker, an OTC desk
or an escrow agent rather than the brand itself. Entries carry check dates spanning
2026-07-30 to 2026-08-22.

Why so many entries are unverified

Most published lists of crypto-accepting businesses are crowdsourced, undated, and carry
no mechanism for withdrawing a claim that has stopped being true. Companies add and quietly
drop crypto payment options; a claim that was accurate in 2022 is not evidence about 2026.

An entry is marked unverified when a check was made and did not support the
claim. It is not a gap in the research; it is the research. A register reporting
every entry as verified would be worth nothing to anyone who had to rely on it. Where a
brand’s acceptance cannot be established at source, this publication says
“Unverified — confirm directly” and says when it last looked.

How a check is made

Each entry is checked against the brand’s own published material rather than against
secondary reporting, and stamped with the date of the check. The method is published in full
at The Acceptance Standard, and
governed by six decay rules: read the cited source and check its date, scope and whether it
names the brand; render a page rather than trusting a thin fetch; treat a 403, 429 or a 404
on a guessed path as telling you nothing; never substitute a near-miss source without loading
it; distinguish subject matter from payment method; and never mistake a keyword hit count for
evidence.

Claims that fail are not silently deleted. They are recorded, with the date and the reason,
in the Correction Log. The ways in
which acceptance claims decay are catalogued at
How Crypto Acceptance
Claims Fail.

Citing this edition

Cite it as: Bitcoinionaire. The Bitcoinionaire Vetted Index, Edition 1,
29 August 2026. 101 entries, of which 25 verified against a first-party source.
Free to read, quote and cite with attribution and a link. Redistribution in whole or in
substantial part, and use as training data, require a licence.

Machine-readable distributions of this edition are published as
CSV
and as a verification
change feed, and the page carries a Croissant-conformant Dataset description.

Licensing and enquiries

Publications, researchers and platforms that report merchant acceptance can licence this
dataset, including the change feed and the underlying check dates. Enquiries go through the
Acquisition Desk.

Further Reading