Pay Your Race Entry in Bitcoin: The Malad Valley Marathon Accepts BTC Natively at Checkout

Bitcoin is now a checkout option for the Malad Valley Marathon. Pick any distance, hit the Bitcoin button at the payment step, scan the QR with your wallet of choice, and your race entry is confirmed once the network confirms the transaction. No PayPal middleman, no BitPay account required, no donation page workaround. Native on-chain Bitcoin to a race-controlled wallet.

The first full marathon to take Bitcoin at checkout?

We have looked. A handful of half marathons and 5Ks have offered Bitcoin at various points over the years, most through third-party processors that converted to fiat behind the scenes. As far as we can tell, no full road marathon in the United States has offered Bitcoin as a direct, native checkout option until now. If you find an earlier full marathon that did this, please tell us and we will update this post. Until then we are claiming the title and treating it as a responsibility, not a marketing slogan.

Why we took the time to build it

Building native crypto checkout into a small race registration system is not free. We did it for three reasons:

• The Bitcoin community runs. A lot. Look at the entrant lists at any large marathon and you will find plenty of orange-pill avatars. They deserve a race that takes their money the way they prefer to spend it.
• Lower fees, better discounts. Credit card processors take 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Bitcoin on-chain costs cents at off-peak times. We pass those savings on as a checkout discount when you pay in crypto.
• It is the right symbol. A small, independent marathon in rural Idaho accepting the most decentralized money in the world says something about where we sit. We are not Big Race. We are runners. So is the Bitcoin community.

How to pay in Bitcoin

1. Pick your distance and continue to checkout.
2. Select the Bitcoin payment option.
3. Scan the QR with your wallet (Sparrow, BlueWallet, Electrum, Muun, Wasabi, Cash App in on-chain mode, anything that scans a BIP21 URI and broadcasts an on-chain transaction).
4. Send. The screen updates as soon as the transaction hits the mempool, and your spot is locked the moment we see one confirmation.
5. Email receipt arrives within a minute of confirmation.

On-chain mainnet only. We do not currently support Lightning, so use a wallet that can broadcast a standard on-chain Bitcoin transaction.

The crypto discount

Paying in Bitcoin (or any of the cryptos we accept) gets you an extra discount on top of the current tier price, stackable with the skip-shirt $10 and the open RUNTHEVALLEY coupon for $5 off. See our full pricing breakdown for how the discounts stack.

Self custody, no KYC

We hold the funds in our own self-custodied wallet, not on an exchange. You do not need an account with us, you do not need to verify your identity to register (just your name and emergency contact, like any other runner), and we do not see anything beyond a transaction hash. Same race experience, same medal, same finish-line photo. Just paid for in money you actually own.

Register with Bitcoin

Sign up for any distance and pick Bitcoin at checkout. Race day is Saturday, September 12, 2026 in Malad City, Idaho.

Stack sats and stack miles.