Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is putting his money where his mouth is. Long a proponent of Bitcoin utility, Dorsey is now reportedly using the Square payment company to deliver Bitcoin grants to developers.
Cointelegraph’s Andrey Shevchenko reports two recipients have already gotten grants of up to $100,000 – more specifically, one got $100,000, and the other got an “undisclosed amount.”
“This formalizes the already significant contributions made by the company toward the cryptocurrency,” Shevchenko writes.
If it sounds a little bit like Erlich Bachman’s incubator, the rules are considerably different – Square clarifies that eligibility involves an exclusive offer to teams working on Bitcoin projects, with open-source initiative models, and applicants who are “in good standing with the Bitcoin community,” whatever that means.
Square also gives example of projects they might support, including wallet library implementations, privacy projects or efforts to develop Bitcoin tools for underserved communities.
“We support Bitcoin by building developer toolkits, contributing to the Lightning Network and Bitcoin Core, and supplying grants that free up developers to work on bitcoin in their own way,” reads a Square announcement on Medium yesterday. “To date, we’ve supplied grants to BTCPayServer and ZmnSCPxj. Today we’re awarding two more to Jon Atack and Tankred Hase, in addition to providing steps that could help your bitcoin project get funded by us.”
The same piece suggests that this BTC support can be a boon for smaller startups that lack capital to build their crypto dreams, writing:
“If you don’t have the financial means to build financial freedom for others, a Square Crypto Grant could be what you need.”
If every Bitcoin fan of means did what Dorsey and his crew are doing, grant writers would have a lot of work.
As it stands, efforts like these remain pillars of emerging Bitcoin adoption and better institutional buy-in throughout 2020.