Link map: what the researched sites link to, and who mentions them

Checked 2026-10-09. Research notes, not advice. The data is in data/2026-10-09-link-map.csv (2,985 rows; columns domain, direction, other_domain, url, date). direction is outbound when domain's own page links to other_domain, and mentioned_by when a page on other_domain names domain. Every row's url is the evidence for that row.

The 185 domains are the clearnet sites cited by the other 2026-10-09 research files (payment processors, exchanges, merchants, wallets, banking, legislation). This file covers only links and mentions. KYC rules and licence status for each business are in the files that cover them: payment processors, exchanges, P2P venues and ATMs, merchants, walk-in shops, wallets and banking. The licence links that showed up on the sites' own pages are listed below; they add to those files and do not replace them.

No .onion address, mirror link or dark-web directory is recorded here. Search results whose address or title pointed at one were dropped before checking, and so were sites named as dark-web guides.

The short version

• Outbound: 153 of the 185 home pages could be read (145 directly, 8 more through WebFetch). 147 of them link to at least one other site: 1,831 links to other hosts, covering 942 distinct sites. 37% of those links go to the same social and app-store layer: LinkedIn (86 of the sites), YouTube (77), Instagram (76), Facebook (73), X (65) and Twitter (58), Google (36, mostly Google Play), TikTok (30), Telegram (29), GitHub (24), Apple (21) and Reddit (18). Source: CSV outbound rows.
• The 185 sites rarely link to each other. Only 118 site-to-site links (a site on the list linking to another site on the list) turned up, and only three pairs link both ways: PayPal and the PayPal newsroom, Venmo and the PayPal newsroom, and Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. The densest clusters are the open-source Bitcoin projects, the US federal sites and Techmeme as a news hub.
• Mentions: 1,154 checked mentions of the 185 domains, out of 2,244 search candidates checked. On almost every list the same few sites come up: Wikipedia (mentions 111 of the 185 domains), Yahoo/Yahoo Finance (84), Bitcoin Magazine (41), Google (31, mostly Google Play listings), Wikibooks (30), Cointelegraph (27), Bitcoin.com News (27), CoinDesk (26), MSN (20) and Benzinga (19). Source: CSV mentioned_by rows.
• Most mentioned by other sites on the list: Binance and NYDFS (each named by 7 of the list's news and reference sites), then Paxful, Flexa, BitMEX, the CFTC, MoonPay, OpenNode, Bitstamp, KuCoin, Bybit and Kraken (6 each).
• Surprising connections (details below):
• Tether is listed as a supporter on both BTCPay Server sites, and Tether's own projects are listed on Plan ₿ Lugano's about page.
• payyd.co, a "crypto payment gateway directory" that another file cites for fee claims, links in its footer to a "network" of odds, residency and privacy-tool sites.
• Strike and Breez have "ask ChatGPT / Claude / Grok about us" buttons.
• luxy.com is an Italian furniture maker, not the Luxy dating app.
• hideyourcard.com has only one external link, and it goes to an adult-products shop.
• Chainalysis links to digital-forensics and surveillance vendors.
• Athena Bitcoin links to El Salvador's financial regulator.

Method

1. Outbound links (2026-10-09, from this Mac). - Fetching. One request for each domain's home page with curl, using a normal desktop Chrome user agent. If the home page linked to an "about" or "partners" page on the same site, that page was fetched too. Each site's robots.txt was read first and followed, using the RFC 9309 rules: a missing (4xx) file means no limits, and an unreachable one means "do not fetch". Requests to the same site were at least 2 seconds apart. - What counts as a link. Only <a href> links count. A link is "outbound" when it goes to a different registrable domain (worked out with the Public Suffix List). So help.coinbase.com → coinbase.com is internal, and so is tax.colorado.gov → colorado.gov. - Bot pages. Links on Cloudflare or other bot-check pages were thrown away. So were share buttons ("share on Reddit/Telegram/WhatsApp"). - WebFetch retry. Sites that blocked curl or sent only a JavaScript shell were tried once with WebFetch. WebFetch returns a model-written list of links, so the link lists for those 8 sites may be incomplete. - Splash pages. Three home pages were language-selection or certificate-problem pages. For those the real home page was used instead: FINTRAC's English intro, PTYcoin's /en/ and www.iowaattorneygeneral.gov.
2. Mentions. - Searches. Each domain got two searches with the local Spark search (research search): the quoted domain with the site itself excluded ("bitpay.com" -site:bitpay.com), and the brand name plus "bitcoin" in the news category (BitPay bitcoin). A third, general-category brand search ran when the first two found fewer than 12 other sites. - Checking. Every candidate was checked before it was kept. It passes if its title or URL contains the domain or a brand pattern specific to that domain. Otherwise the page was fetched (robots.txt followed, 2 s per site) and its text or links had to name the domain. - Limits on what was kept. At most 10 mentioning sites per domain, one URL per site. Docs, help and blog subdomains needed their own name ("Coinbase Help", "BTCPay Server docs"), not just the company name. - Manual removals. After a manual review, 8 matches were removed: 4 that named a different entity with the same name (the Seattle Kraken hockey team, "Rock n' Roll Dating.Com", an unrelated "cash app" game, a "Stock Tesla" login page) and 4 pages about individual people (a CV, a personal profile page and two LinkedIn profiles).
3. Results. - Evidence for the 1,154 mentions: 744 by title, 49 by URL, 173 by a link to the domain on the page, and 188 by the domain or brand appearing in the page text. - Rejected candidates: 1,082 in all (plus the 8 manual removals). 738 fetched pages did not name the domain, 267 returned HTTP errors (mostly 403), 58 were disallowed by robots.txt, and 19 were unreachable, PDFs, or unreadable.

Limits

• One page is a small sample. A home page (plus an about or partners page) shows what a site chooses to put on its front door. It does not show the whole site. A site with no links on its home page may link out heavily elsewhere.
• JavaScript and bot walls hide links. 32 home pages produced no usable links. Some blocked us, some were empty shells that only fill in with JavaScript, and some were disallowed by robots.txt. Those are listed at the end. Coinbase, Mastercard, Tesla, Gucci, TAG Heuer, Expedia, Emirates, OkCupid and Ashley Madison are among them, so the outbound picture for big brands is thin.
• Search is not a backlink index. The Spark meta-search (Bing, Yahoo, Seznam, Wikipedia, Hacker News and others) often ignores quotation marks, ranks the site's own pages first and has a Czech-language bias from Seznam. "Mentioned by" is therefore a sample of pages that name the domain, not a count of inbound links. Ranking, inbound-link volume and authority were not measured.
• Mentions can be incidental. A match can be a sidebar, a citation in a Wikipedia footnote, an app-store listing or a scam-checker page (Trustpilot, ScamAdviser, Scam Detector). The CSV does not grade mentions as favourable, unfavourable or neutral.
• The 10-per-domain cap flattens the top. 68 domains hit the cap, so "number of mentions" cannot rank the well-known names against each other. The ranking above instead counts how many other sites on the list name each domain.
• Brand matching can still be wrong for short or common names (Square, Strike, Speed, Gemini, Kraken, Flexa, Tesla). Mentions of the company count even when the page does not link to the site. A spot check after the tightening found the false positives listed above; others may remain (unverified).
• Everything is as of 2026-10-09. Links change often, and some pages were fetched minutes apart under different bot-protection states.

Clusters

1. The shared social and app layer

Almost every commercial site links to the same handful of platforms. That says little about relationships, but it does show where each business keeps its public presence. Two outliers stand out:

• Nostr. Strike, Hodl Hodl, Mostro, Peach and Blink link to Nostr clients (Primal, Snort, Zapstore).
• Bluesky. 13 sites link to Bluesky (bsky.app): four government offices (NY AG, DC AG, Oregon DOJ and Washington DFI), news outlets (TechCrunch, Techmeme, ICIJ, MinnPost, BridgeDetroit), NBER, and Mozilla and Wikimedia. None of the exchanges or processors do.

Source: CSV outbound rows for primal.net, snort.social, zapstore.dev and bsky.app.

2. Open-source Bitcoin projects and their funders

• GitHub is the hub. 24 of the sites link to GitHub, among them BitPay, BTCPay Server (docs and blog), Breez, Blink, Bisq, RoboSats, Mostro, Peach, Coinsnap, Lightspark, Flexa, CoinGate, ZBD, Coinbase CDP, Stripe, Mullvad and arXiv.
• The same funders recur. The Human Rights Foundation (hrf.org) is linked from BTCPay Server's docs and blog, RoboSats and Mostro. OpenSats is linked from BTCPay Server's docs and blog and from Mostro.
• BTCPay Server's docs say it "is proudly supported by these entities through the BTCPay Server Foundation": Spiral, OpenSats, Tether, HRF, LunaNode, Wallet of Satoshi, Unbank, Coincards and IVPN (docs.btcpayserver.org, blog.btcpayserver.org).
• Mostro also links to its Geyser fundraising page (mostro.network).
• Within-project links. Bisq links to the Bisq wiki, and the wiki's own pages name Bisq (bisq.network). RoboSats' two domains are one site: robosats.com redirects to robosats.org. That site links to kycnot.me, HRF, Bitcoin Magazine's RoboSats article and the Bitcoin and Lightning papers (robosats.org).
• BTCPay plugins. Blink's BTCPay plugin page names BTCPay Server, and BTCPay's blog has a case study on Namecheap accepting bitcoin (blink.sv, blog.btcpayserver.org case study).

3. US federal government sites

• Shared plumbing. Treasury, OFAC, FinCEN, the SEC, the DOJ, NYDFS and the DC Attorney General all link to GovDelivery for e-mail alerts. Treasury, OFAC, FinCEN, the CFPB, the DOJ, the SEC and the CFTC all link to usa.gov.
• Links within government. Treasury links to FinCEN (home.treasury.gov). IC3 links to the FBI and the DOJ (WebFetch, ic3.gov). FinCEN's own 2013 guidance page names Treasury (FIN-2013-G001).
• The SEC as a filing archive. Several businesses point at the SEC: Square links to Block's 2023 10-K, Ferrari to its EDGAR page, and 24/7 Wall St to individual filings (squareup.com, ferrari.com, 247wallst.com).

4. News and press logos

• Techmeme is the hub. Techmeme's front page links to 220 other sites. Nineteen of them are on the list: Bloomberg, CNBC, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, crypto.news, Decrypt, Yahoo Finance, Fortune, IBTimes, Microsoft, Bitcoin.com News, PYMNTS, Reason, SiliconANGLE, TechCrunch, The Paypers, Y Combinator, Reddit and the New York Attorney General (a press release banning a former crypto CEO) (techmeme.com).
• Press logos. Several businesses link to news coverage of themselves:
• CoinFlip (ATMs): Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, Forbes, TechCrunch, USA Today, NY Post, crypto.news and Bitcoin.com (coinflip.tech).
• MoonPay: Bloomberg, CNBC, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, CNN, Business Insider, Fox Business, The Times (moonpay.com).
• Hodl Hodl: Bloomberg, CoinDesk, CNN, Yahoo Finance, Bitcoin Magazine (hodlhodl.com).
• Triple-A: Bloomberg, Forbes, TechCrunch (triple-a.io).
• Forbes and Trustpilot as trust signals. Forbes is linked from 8 sites, including Kraken ("best crypto exchanges" award), NOWPayments, Triple-A and Chainalysis. Five link to their own Trustpilot page: Bitrefill, CoinFlip, MoonPay, NOWPayments and Peach.

5. Payments groups

• PayPal ↔ Venmo ↔ PayPal newsroom. These are the only mutual links among the business sites. PayPal's partner directory alone links to 116 other sites (shopping carts, invoicing tools, donation platforms) (paypal.com partners).
• Block. Square and Cash App both link to block.xyz. Cash App also links to FINRA and SIPC, the usual brokerage disclosures (cash.app, squareup.com).
• Mesh. meshpay.com is Mesh Connect: apart from LinkedIn, X and YouTube, every external link on it goes to meshconnect.com (its dashboard, docs and status pages) (meshpay.com).
• Overstock links to bedbathandbeyond.com and beyond.com investor pages (overstock.com).
• Kraken links to Payward (named as "Kraken parent Payward" in a Techmeme headline found here), NinjaTrader, Breakout, CF Benchmarks, xStocks and Reap (kraken.com).
• Stripe's about page links to Tempo (tempo.xyz), mpp.dev and Open Standard in the sentence "We build entirely new pieces of financial infrastructure" (stripe.com/about).

6. Compliance and forensics vendors

• Chainalysis. Its home, company and partners pages link to 43 other sites. Among them are digital-forensics, intelligence and identity vendors: Cellebrite, Cognyte, Penlink, Siren, Intel 471, SpyCloud, Esri, Sumsub, Persona, Alloy and Authsignal. It also links to custody firms (Fireblocks, Ledger, Taurus, Utila, Dfns). The partners page says it connects "blockchain intelligence into investigation partners including i2, Cellebrite, Siren" (chainalysis.com/partners).
• Notabene, a Travel Rule compliance firm, links to the EU Joinup page and LACChain (notabene.id).

Most-mentioned sites

How many of the list's own news and reference sites name each domain (from the mentioned_by rows where other_domain is also on the list):

Which sites do the mentioning: across all 185 domains the most frequent mentioning sites are Wikipedia (111 domains), Yahoo (84), Bitcoin Magazine (41), Google Play (31 under google.com), Wikibooks (30), Cointelegraph (27), Bitcoin.com (27), CoinDesk (26), MSN (20), Benzinga (19), GitHub (18), Trustpilot (14), Techmeme (12), Apple App Store (11), Facebook (11), and 247 Wall St, Nasdaq, TheStreet, X and Law360 (10 each).

No checked mention was found for 14 domains. help.opennode.com, micawatch.com, cloakd.ai, payyd.co, peachbitcoin.com, mostro.network, mcdermottlaw.com, infobytes.orrick.com, bitcoinatm.news, datingapps.com, hideyourcard.com, news.bitcoin.com and whoacceptsit.com had none, and luxy.com had none as itself (see below). For the small ones this mostly means the search found only pages that did not name them. It is not proof that nobody does.

Mentions between businesses (not news sites) on the list:

• BitPay's merchant directory has pages for ExpressVPN and Newegg (bitpay.com/directory/expressvpn, bitpay.com/directory/newegg).
• payyd.co reviews CoinPayments (payyd.co/blog/coinpayments-review).
• The DOJ hosts the IC3 complaint-form page (justice.gov).

Surprising connections

1. Tether behind Bitcoin infrastructure and events. - BTCPay Server, the self-hosted, no-KYC processor, names Tether among the "entities" supporting it through the BTCPay Server Foundation (docs.btcpayserver.org). - Plan ₿ Lugano's about page describes Tether's investments and links Holepunch, Keet, WDK and QVAC (Tether projects) (planb.lugano.ch/about). - News found by the searches reports a Tether-led $8 million investment in Speed (tryspeed.com) (Bitcoin Magazine; Cointelegraph).
2. payyd.co is part of a network of sites. - Its footer has a "Sovereignty" section (Crypto Cards, Sovereign Living, Palau e-Residency, Second Residency, Privacy Tools) and a "From our network" section. That section lists Popular AI Tools, Predictor Tips, Referee Stats and six odds sites (ScreenOdds, OdSage, GridOdds, MacroOdds, GeoOdds, RiftOdds). The footer also says "Some links on this site are affiliate links" (payyd.co). - Its partners page is titled "Sponsored product profiles" (payyd.co/partners). - The payment-processors file already found payyd.co's fee claims for BitPay and NOWPayments contradicted by the processors' own pages. - Common ownership of the "network" sites is (unverified): the footer says "our network", but nothing on the page names an owner.
3. "Ask an AI about us" buttons. - Strike's home page links to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Google's AI mode with a ready-made prompt: "Read https://strike.me/index.md and answer my questions…" (strike.me). - Breez does the same with "I'm building a product and want to understand how the Breez…" (breez.technology).
4. luxy.com is not the Luxy dating app. On 2026-10-09 luxy.com was the site of an Italian design-furniture company: its title is "Home - Luxy", its about page is "Chi Siamo", and it links to Instagram luxy_design_furniture (luxy.com). The dating app "Luxy | Dating for High-End Singles" shows up in search at onluxy.com (search-result title only, unverified as the app's official domain). The merchants file uses "Luxy" only for the dating app, so any link-map row for luxy.com is about the furniture firm.
5. hideyourcard.com sells gift cards for "Live Cams, Creators, Dating, and Paysites". The only external link on its home page goes to an adult-products shop (hideyourcard.com). No other site checked here names it.
6. Athena Bitcoin (ATMs) links from its home page to the complaints page of El Salvador's financial regulator, the Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero (athenabitcoin.com).
7. LocalBitcoins still serves a closure notice: "LocalBitcoins Oy has closed its Bitcoin trading service. You may still have funds available for withdrawal" (localbitcoins.com).
8. The Giving Block (crypto donations) links to Stand With Crypto's sign-up page, the Coinbase-backed advocacy group (thegivingblock.com). The Coinbase backing is from general knowledge, not checked here (unverified).
9. Cryptwerk, the merchant directory, carries banner ads for accszone.com and paykilla.com, tagged utm_source=cryptwerk&utm_medium=banner (cryptwerk.com).

Licence and regulator links shown on the sites

These are links the businesses themselves put on their home or about pages on 2026-10-09. The registration numbers are as shown by the company and were not checked against each registry here (unverified). For KYC thresholds and full licence status, see the processors and exchanges files.

Strike also links a South Carolina consumer-rights PDF (strike.me).

Could not fetch

Home pages that gave no usable links on 2026-10-09 (outbound side only; their mention searches still ran):

• Disallowed by robots.txt: courtlistener.com (allows only named search engines) and reddit.com.
• robots.txt unreachable, treated as disallow: bka.de and whoacceptsit.com (connections timed out).
• HTTP 403 or bot challenge for both curl and WebFetch: coinbase.com, help.coinbase.com, mastercard.com, paxful.com, mass.gov, publications.tnsosfiles.com, benzinga.com, namecheap.com, okcupid.com, okcupid-app.zendesk.com, support.feeld.co, savethechildren.org, tesla.com and tagheuer.com. ashleymadison.com was also blocked, and WebFetch refused it.
• Rate-limited or timed out: expedia.com (HTTP 429, "Bot or Not?"), emirates.com (403, then WebFetch timeout), and gucci.com and usnews.com (no response; WebFetch refused or timed out).
• JavaScript shell or bot page with no links, even through WebFetch: merchant.binance.com, bitstamp.net, bitcoindepot.com, iga.in.gov, europol.europa.eu ("Loading application"), search-uk-sanctions-list.service.gov.uk, help.shopify.com, imf.org and mcdermottlaw.com.
• Read but with no external links (these count among the 153 read): localbitcoins.com (closure notice), travala.com, bitcoinatm.news, ptycoin.com, pro.stateaffairs.com (redirects to a login page) and bybit.com (JavaScript shell; WebFetch timed out).
• sec.gov blocked curl with "Request Rate Threshold Exceeded". The SEC asks automated clients to declare a contact e-mail in the user agent. None was sent, so the SEC row comes from WebFetch.

Per-domain results

"Verified mentions (of candidates)" means how many mentioning sites passed the check, out of how many different sites the searches returned.