Cowrie Research

byte-federal

3 min read

Byte Federal

  • Name: Byte Federal
  • URL: https://www.bytefederal.com/
  • Category: Bitcoin ATM network / merchant payments infrastructure / wallet-auth and ATM-discovery control plane
  • Tags: bitcoin-ecosystem
  • Summary: Byte Federal is a Bitcoin access-and-merchant operator with an ATM fleet attached. The useful part is the combined wallet-auth, merchant-checkout, and ATM-discovery stack, not the kiosk count.
  • What it does:
    • Operates a U.S. Bitcoin ATM network and associated wallet surfaces for buying, selling, and managing crypto access
    • Offers ByteConnect for in-person POS and online crypto payments, including wallet support, merchant dashboards, and API-led payment flows
    • Uses ByteVault mobile authentication plus WebWallet merchant backend flows for merchant onboarding, secure login, analytics, store configuration, and API enablement
    • Exposes developer-facing APIs across authentication, merchant payments, and AI-native ATM discovery under the ByteAuth, ByteConnect, and ByteMCP product surfaces
    • Publishes ByteMCP as an MCP server with tool-based ATM lookup, live status queries, SSE/HTTP endpoints, and JSON-RPC tool execution
  • Key claims:
    • The APIs landing page says Byte Federal offers three API surfaces—ByteAuth, ByteConnect, and ByteMCP—and markets them as developer-ready infrastructure with 99.9% uptime, sub-100ms response times, and 1,400+ ATM locations discoverable through ByteMCP
    • The ByteConnect POS page says merchants can accept Bitcoin and crypto in-store or online, that ByteConnect is compatible with all wallets, and that ByteVault provides faster transactions and enhanced features
    • The ByteConnect page also highlights a free administrative dashboard for monitoring sales, exchanged cryptocurrencies, stored transaction data, and realtime charts, which suggests a fuller merchant-operations layer beyond a simple payment button
    • The same ByteConnect page foregrounds “Easy Setup & Powerful API Capabilities” and explicitly lists a web-based online-payments mode with API documentation and a 1.50% transaction fee
    • The merchant account setup docs say merchants begin in the ByteVault app, then finish onboarding in WebWallet, where the Merchant section unlocks backend features and the API section can generate credentials used for token-based authentication
    • The ByteMCP introduction says the MCP server lets AI assistants query live Byte Federal ATM data through four tools: find_nearest_bitcoin_atm, get_atm_details, check_atm_status, and list_atms_by_city
    • The ByteMCP docs say results include live locations, timezone-aware operating status, hours, and distance sorting, and that the server can run locally or remotely with Claude integration
    • The ByteMCP API reference documents /health, /.well-known/mcp-server, /sse, and /mcp endpoints, JSON-RPC tools/call execution, and rate limits of 5 connections/second for SSE and 10 requests/second for MCP calls
  • Whitepaper: No canonical standalone Byte Federal, ByteConnect, or ByteMCP whitepaper or litepaper surfaced in this pass. The clearest current sources of truth were the official site, API landing page, ByteConnect docs, and ByteMCP docs; see ../whitepapers/byte-federal-primary-sources-2026-05-02.md.
  • Sources:

Internal linkages

  • Best upward reads for consumer Bitcoin access and operator-controlled balances: cash-app and blink.
  • Merchant-software contrast when the ATM and wallet shell are not the point: btcpay-server.

Control surface

  • Power sits in ATM placement, onboarding and auth defaults, merchant admission, API credentialing, and the discovery endpoints that decide how users or agents find locations.

  • Read it as an operator stack that happens to include ATMs, not as neutral access infrastructure.

  • Last reviewed: 2026-06-03 UTC

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