The Human Rights Foundation sponsors Bitcoin development

The international human rights organization The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has set up a donation fund to sponsor the development of bitcoin. An initial $ 50,000 dollar scholarship has since been provided to Chris Belcher, a bitcoin developer working to improve bitcoin’s privacy through CoinSwaps. HRF will soon announce which other bitcoin developer will receive a second grant. Those who also want to donate can visit the HRF website.

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has long been enthusiastic about bitcoin. It has therefore been possible for some time to donate to the foundation via bitcoin. HRF is now going the extra mile, because it has set up a special donation fund to sponsor the development of Bitcoin.

The funds raised are made available to bitcoin developers who, according to HRF, do important work, with the main focus on improving privacy.

“Unlike the banking and payment services in the traditional system, Bitcoin is global and has no boundaries. Users do not need to create an account, provide IDs to use the service, and their transactions cannot be censored or frozen by The authorities It is not possible for governments, companies or individuals with a lot of bitcoin to change the rules of the network, to block access to it or to print more bitcoin.Users can enter their password in the form of a keep or memorize a string of words, which makes confiscation very difficult. In view of all these properties, Bitcoin can be a resource for human rights defenders, especially if it improves privacy and usability. “

Chris Belcher

The first bitcoin developer to receive sponsorship from the HRF fund is Brit Chris Belcher. Belcher is regarded by many as a leading expert in Bitcoin privacy and in the past he has made important contributions to the development of Electrum Personal Server and JoinMarket, among others.

He has recently started working on a new implementation of CoinSwap, a technology that can significantly improve the privacy of bitcoin transactions. For his open source work, he now receives sponsorship worth $ 50,000 from the HRF fund.

That financial support is very welcome, according to Chris Belcher, because the development of Bitcoin is done open source and the work is therefore in principle unpaid. “The Human Rights Foundation fund directly supports the CoinSwap project,” he explains. “I sometimes did freelance programming work unrelated to Bitcoin when I needed money. With this kind of scholarship and donations I no longer have to and I can fully focus on the CoinSwap project and Bitcoin privacy.”