At this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum, gigabrain Lyn Alden made the case that bitcoin is now liquid enough to be used in a human rights context, a compelling argument and one with which I agree.

Bitcoin, which now has a market cap of over $1.2 trillion, is less volatile than it was a decade ago and can now more readily be used to help empower those who’ve historically been financially disenfranchised. (The larger an asset’s market cap, the less volatile the price of the asset tends to become. When bitcoin had a much lower market cap in its early days, it wasn’t uncommon to see it lose over 80% of its value in crashes. For this reason, it would have been much harder to use it in a human rights context back then.)

Here are some examples of how Bitcoin is currently being used for human rights purposes:

• Bitcoin Dada educates African women about how to invest in and use Bitcoin. Many women in Africa live in patriarchal societies in which women aren’t permitted to own property. Bitcoin helps them subvert such rules, allowing them to save in the hardest asset ever known to humanity, with few being the wiser.

• Bitcoin Dua is a Bitcoin circular economy and a community center located in Ghana in which community members not only learn what Bitcoin is and how to use it but also skills that they can use to obtain jobs in which they can earn in bitcoin. This program is particularly relevant in a country in which the traditional currency was the worst-performing currency in the world in 2022 and continues to fall in value versus the US dollar.

• Lyudmyla Kozlovska, President of the Open Dialogue Foundation, someone who has been debanked by dictators herself, has been making the case to regulators in the United States and Europe that Bitcoin is a money and financial network of last resort for pro-democracy activists living under authoritarian regimes and that the right to use it needs to be protected. She argues that one of the first moves in the playbook of dictators these days is to cut dissidents off from the traditional financial system, leaving said dissidents with Bitcoin as their primary means to transact.

The work that these people, programs and institutions and the many others like them have done during the previous Bitcoin epoch has set the stage for the Empowerment Epoch — Bitcoin’s fifth epoch, the one in which it will become synonymous with the term “human rights.”

That said, this will not come without challenges.

High fees on the Bitcoin base chain will price certain users out of self-custody, pushing them to use Layer 2 solutions like Lightning and extensions of Lightning like ecash, non-traceable versions of sats that can be sent at almost no cost.

Companies like Fedi have developed a super app for the Global South that gives users access to Lightning, ecash and other freedom tech, while Machankura enables residents of various African countries to transact with bitcoin in a custodial manner using feature phones (non-smart phones). (Machankura is also working on turning feature phones into Bitcoin hardware wallets.)

Layer 2 solutions will not be perfect and there will be tradeoffs with each of them. But even considering the imperfections of the technologies that make bitcoin more usable, they still provide many around the world with access to a parallel financial system, serving as a hedge to the existing monetary and financial systems.

As new challenges arise, I have little doubt that organizations like the Human Rights Foundation will continue to bring activists and educators together with developers and entrepreneurs to meet these challenges and to help bring bitcoin — the people’s money — to those who need it most in this, the Empowerment Epoch.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

₿trust, an initiative committed to supporting open-source Bitcoin developers based in the Global South, has announced the recipients of its Q3 Starter Grants and the new members of its ₿trust Open-Source Cohort.

1/ 📢 Announcing the ₿trust Q3 Grants!

We're excited to announce the recipients of our Q3, 2024 ₿trust Starter Grants and the Open-Source Cohort Members! 🚀

A key part of our mission of empowering talented Global South devs to contribute to Bitcoin's open-source ecosystem. pic.twitter.com/FnlgPGJoHu

— Btrust (@btrustteam) August 16, 2024

The Starter Grants, which provide full-time funding to Bitcoin software engineers, are a sign of ₿trust’s dedication to expanding the number of open-source Bitcoin contributors from regions such as Africa, MENA, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Each recipient receives six months of support, including a stipend paid in bitcoin, technical guidance and support in developing proposals to to join the ₿trust Open-Source Cohort with long-term funding.

Why ₿trust Starter Grants Matter

₿trust Starter Grants provide financial stability to talented open source developers, which helps them focus on their work without financial stress. They also provide mentorship and support aimed to help the developers establish long-term, sustainable careers in the Bitcoin space.

“Through these grants, we can tangibly contribute to decentralizing Bitcoin open source development by introducing these developers with diverse perspectives to strengthen the resilience of the Bitcoin network,” said ₿trust Interim CEO Abubakar Nur Khalil in a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine.

The Starter Grants also provide a pathway to the ₿trust Open-Source Cohort. Developers in the ₿trust Open-Source Cohort receive mentorship, professional development and extended financial support while contributing to open-source initiatives.

“The intention is to make grantees’ Bitcoin open-source careers sustainable, and in addition to the long-term financial support we provide, create a supportive environment for them to thrive and feel a larger sense of community,” said Nur Khalil.

Starter Grant Recipients

The recipients of Q3 2024 Starter Grants are as follows:

Enigbe Ochekliye

Ochekliye has over two years of experience in backend engineering and has worked on projects including Galoy’s Stablesats and Easepay’s payment service provider (PSP).

Ochekliye will contribute to The Lightning Development Kit’s rust-lightning through this grant. She will also work to improve the onboarding process for new contributors to Bitcoin open source projects.

Tobechi Chukwuleta

Chukwuleta is a highly-experienced backend developer with a background in data analysis. He has also been instrumental in enhancing BTCPay Server functionality, especially as it pertains to the system’s multisig capabilities and plugin development.

The funds from his Starter Grant will support him as he continues to advance BTCPay Server’s store functionality as well as the platform’s modularity.

Kelvin Isievwore

Isievwore is currently contributing to Bitcoin open source projects such as Polar and LND. While working under the Starter Grant, Isievwore will focus on streamlining the testing and development process for engineers building on Lightning.

New Members Of The Open-Source Cohort

The new members of the ₿trust Open-Source Cohort are as follows:

Abubakar Sadiq Ismail

Sadiq Ismail is a Nigerian Bitcoin Core contributor who is actively involved in optimizing the Bitcoin protocol. He works on critical areas of Bitcoin Core such as long-term fee estimation and transaction analysis.

Sadiq Ismail’s work on Mempool fee estimation analysis showcases his technical abilities, which helps to improve the scalability and usability of Bitcoin. While a part of the cohort, he will continue this work, as he refines his abilities to contribute to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Duncan Dean

Dean is a Lightning contributor from South Africa. He has been deeply involved with developing the highly-modular Lightning library, rust-lightning.

Dean also actively participates in projects like ldk-review-club and lndk, where he has contributed to improving continuous integration (CI) actions and helped maintain the robustness of the codebase. While in the cohort, Dean aims to strengthen his abilities to contribute to Bitcoin and Lightning.

Oghenovo Usiwoma

Usiwoma is a Bitcoin Core contributor based in Nigeria who has been with ₿trust since 2023. Under the ₿trust Starter Grant he focused on advancing Silent Payments functionality.

As part of the ₿trust Open-Source Cohort, he will work on introducing new key formats and descriptors for Silent Payments in Bitcoin Core, continuing his work of enhancing the privacy and scalability features of Bitcoin.

Applying For A ₿trust Grant

Developers based in Africa, the MENA region, Southeast Asia and Latin America can apply for ₿trust grants.

Developers in other regions of the Global South will also be considered for grants on a case-by-case basis, predominantly based on their proof of work in the Bitcoin space.

Apply for a ₿trust Starter Grant via this ₿trust link.