🎉 HRF is excited to announce its Q4 round of Bitcoin Development Fund grants 🎁

💰 $500,000 to 18 projects across areas such as global education, Bitcoin Core, mining decentralization, and support for devs in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

One grantee is Mostro, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange created by Venezuelan developer Francisco Calderon. It is designed to facilitate censorship-resistant financial transactions under authoritarian regimes.

📚 MyFirstBitcoin, a non-profit in Central America, is another recipient. They offer an open-source Bitcoin education program. With HRF’s support, they’ll be able to increase their international expansion, bringing crucial knowledge to more closed societies.

Arabic Hodl is making Bitcoin education more accessible to the more than 400 million Arabic-speaking people worldwide. Hodl’s project includes creating how-to guides, privacy tutorials, educational podcasts, and foundational Bitcoin literature in Arabic.

🌐🔍 Netblocks receives support for their vital work in monitoring global internet restrictions. Continuous internet monitoring is crucial for activists and journalists to maintain their freedom of expression, access to information, and safety. Strong internet is also important for financial freedom.

HRF is funding developer Lorban for his work on StratumV2. Stratum V2 enables mining pool users to select transactions for proposed blocks, instead of relying on templates from pools, increasing Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. ⛏️

John Carlson's efforts to improve the Bitcoin Core App project is also receiving support. Through this work, he hopes to lower technical barriers and make Bitcoin transactions more accessible to a wider audience, starting with users on Android devices.

Area Bitcoin, founded by Carol Souza and Kaka Furlan, is expanding its Brazilian educational content across Latin America. The HRF funding will enable translations of their resources into Spanish and English. 📚🌎

🇳🇮In Nicaragua, Berta Valle is focusing on Bitcoin education for human rights defenders in Latin America. Her project will empower dissidents and civil society leaders with Bitcoin to help them become financially resilient against oppressive regimes.

Bitshala in India is creating a hub of Bitcoin knowledge and community. With HRF's support, they'll provide tutorials, technical training, and resources for budding Bitcoin developers in the country. 🇮🇳🌱💡

HRF is supporting hack.bs in Italy. With the grant, hack.bs is establishing a cypherpunk hackerspace that will bring together locals and global experts in the areas of financial freedom and the defense of privacy. 🇮🇹🛡️

Bitcoin Deepa is nurturing the Bitcoin community in Sri Lanka. HRF funding will enhance their educational efforts and promote Bitcoin adoption among local merchants. 🇱🇰💼

🌍Exonumia translates Bitcoin educational content into African languages like Shona, Malagasy, Amharic, Kiswahili, and Lingala. Funding will support their efforts to expand to more languages, raise awareness of Bitcoin, and grow financial-freedom oriented communities.

HRF is supporting L0la L33tz’s efforts to create a Bitcoin privacy guide for beginners, with a special focus on activists, dissidents, and NGOs in hostile environments. We look forward to publishing and sharing this document in 2024. 🌐🛡️

HRF is awarding a grant to Groundswell in the UK. Groundswell supports Bitcoin education for refugees and diaspora communities, particularly from the Middle East. The project will host workshops, practical training, and help refugees (plus their families) receive their first Bitcoin. 🇬🇧🌍

⛏️HRF is supporting Kulpreet Singh's work on Braidpool, a proposed peer-to-peer mining pool. By allowing miners to build their blocks and reducing pool operators’ grip on payouts, Braidpool is designed to enhance Bitcoin’s censorship resistance and decentralized nature.

HRF is proud to support SeedSigner developer Keith Mukai. Funds will facilitate MicroPython research and development to enable operations on affordable microcontrollers. This will eliminate Raspberry Pi dependencies, making SeedSigner more robust and accessible. 🔐

Bitcoin++, a developer-focused conference series around the world. Funding will cover educational efforts, general conference expenses, as well as travel expenses for developers from authoritarian countries.

Bitcoin Atlantis, a conference in Madeira. HRF funding will help human rights defenders, civil society leaders, and educators working in dictatorships to attend the event to share their experiences with thousands of Bitcoin builders, creators, and educators. 🇵🇹🌊

With these grants, HRF continues to push the boundaries of financial freedom, privacy, and human rights through Bitcoin. Stay tuned for more updates on these exciting initiatives. We’re looking forward to greater innovation in 2024! 🚀🔐

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I am looking forward to seeing many of you there and speaking about this fantastic protocol 🥹