BitMEX co-founder and popular crypto trader Arthur Hayes is now funding Bitcoin Core development through a grant program at Maelstrom – his family office’s crypto investment firm.
Arthur Hayes’s Bitcoin Developer Grant Program
The entrepreneur is widely known for his hyper-bullish essays and predictions on Bitcoin price appreciation, which focus on the devaluation of fiat currency as a catalyst for crypto adoption. Unlike other crypto projects, however, Maelstrom notes that Bitcoin never conducted a formal raise to fund its development.
“We are therefore keen to give back and donate to the Bitcoin technology, on which the crypto ecosystem depends,” wrote Maelstrom on its Bitcoin Grant Program page.
Bitcoin Core is the first and most widely implemented Bitcoin software client. It defines the parameters of the Bitcoin protocol and acts as a standard for the entire industry and network.
Since Bitcoin lacked an initial raise, VCs, a founding team, or even a known creator, the protocol has come to represent the ultimate beacon of decentralization and stability within the crypto ecosystem. That said, it’s also left the protocol much slower to adopt new technology, and bereft of funding for basic software maintenance.
Maelstrom’s grant program aims to spur technical development on Bitcoin, with a sharp focus on “resilience, scalability, censorship resistance, and privacy characteristics.”
Individual developers may receive between $50,000 and $150,000 in grants, sent out in twelve monthly payments via BTC, USDC, or USDT. Grant stacking is permitted, up to a cap of $250,000 per year.
“A Grantee will be expected to contribute to Bitcoin’s technical development, potentially in the form of pull requests or review work for the Bitcoin Core software project,” the firm said. A pull request is a proposal to merge a set of changes into Bitcoin’s codebase.
Funding Bitcoin Development
Other wealthy crypto firms have begun providing grants for Bitcoin developers in recent years. Back in October, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey backed the Bitcoin non-profit Brink with $5 million to fund developers. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETF sponsors including Bitwise and VanEck have pledged to donate a portion of their profits to Bitcoin Core development.
By contrast, MicroStrategy’s executive chairman Michael Saylor has spoken out against providing too much funding to Bitcoin Core development without any targeted focus.
“I don’t want a developer industrial complex,” said Saylor during an interview in May. “Maybe it’s not a good look to provide unlimited, ungoverned funding to development efforts that might destabilize the network.”
