Human Rights Foundation launches Bitcoin Development Fund
The Human Rights Foundation created a Bitcoin Development Fund to finance open-source work aimed at making Bitcoin more private, decentralized and resilient for people facing financial repression.
On June 11, the Human Rights Foundation announced a fund dedicated to Bitcoin software development. HRF explicitly connected the project to the needs of activists, journalists and civil-society organizations that can face frozen accounts, payment surveillance or restrictions on receiving money.
The fund's first grant went to Chris Belcher for CoinSwap work intended to make blockchain surveillance more difficult. That choice tied the initiative to concrete privacy engineering rather than treating Bitcoin merely as a fundraising symbol.
The launch was historically significant because it joined human-rights advocacy to the financing of Bitcoin's open-source infrastructure. It also broadened the pool of institutions paying developers whose work is public and not owned by a single company.