Bitwise Donates $233K to Bitcoin Developers, Bringing Two-Year Total to $383K
Most Bitcoin ETF issuers compete on fees. Bitwise has been competing on something else.
Since launching BITB in January 2024, the San Francisco-based asset manager has pledged 10% of gross profits from the fund to developers who maintain and secure the Bitcoin protocol, the people who write the code that a $1.4 trillion network runs on, and who are almost entirely dependent on donations and grants to do so.
Wednesday’s $233,000 payment is the second annual installment from Bitwise, following a $150,000 contribution in February 2025. Combined, the two donations total $383,000.
The $233,000 figure is also a useful data point in itself. Since Bitwise donates 10% of gross profits, the payment implies BITB generated approximately $2.33 million in gross profits during its second full year of operation, meaningful growth from the first year, which produced $150,000 in donations and implied $1.5 million in gross profit.
BITB charges a 0.2% annual fee on assets under management. According to Farside Investors, the fund has seen $2.2 billion in cumulative net inflows since launch, ranking third among US spot Bitcoin ETFs behind BlackRock’s IBIT at $62.4 billion and Fidelity’s FBTC at $11 billion.
It has held up relatively well through the recent market pullback, edging from $2.17 billion to $2.21 billion in net inflows across the first nine weeks of 2026.
How the Money Gets Allocated
Bitwise is not deciding where the money goes. That job falls to three organizations: Bitcoin Brink, which funds protocol developers directly; OpenSats, a public charity that supports Bitcoin and free and open-source software contributors; and the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund, which specifically backs developers in authoritarian countries where access to censorship-resistant money has the most practical urgency.
All three organizations have existing relationships with working developers and the technical context to evaluate where funding is most needed. Bitwise writing a check and letting them decide avoids the awkwardness of a for-profit ETF issuer directing development priorities on a decentralized protocol.
The funding model also reflects a real problem in Bitcoin development. Protocol contributors typically cannot monetize their work directly, there is no revenue attached to merging a pull request or reviewing a cryptographic proposal.
The developers keeping the network secure largely depend on a small ecosystem of grant programs, corporate sponsors, and individual donors.
OpenSats alone has distributed millions in grants since 2021, funded by donations from individuals including Jack Dorsey, who has contributed tens of millions to Bitcoin development funding over the past several years.
Bitwise’s model threads a slightly different needle: tying developer funding directly to ETF profitability, so that as institutional adoption grows and BITB assets under management increase, the developer grant pool grows with it.
Why This Is Worth Paying Attention To
The amounts involved are modest relative to Bitwise’s overall business. But the structure matters more than the dollar figure. If BITB continues growing and the 10% commitment holds, the annual donation could scale meaningfully over time, particularly if Bitcoin’s price recovers and inflows resume.
It also sets a precedent that other ETF issuers could follow or choose to ignore. BlackRock and Fidelity, whose Bitcoin ETFs have drawn tens of billions more in flows than BITB, have made no comparable public commitment to developer funding.
