Btrust exists to change where the next generation of Bitcoin protocol work comes from. Its journey began in 2021 with a 500 BTC donation from Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z, and its stated mission is to decentralise the development of Bitcoin software by locating, educating and remunerating open-source engineers in the Global South.
The reasoning is stated as a resilience argument rather than a fairness one. Btrust holds that decentralisation of the people building for and on Bitcoin enhances its resilience, reach and relevance as a global currency, and that it should therefore operate in regions where Bitcoin development is uncommon. That argument is codified in a set of Genesis Principles it describes as immutable, covering Bitcoin-only support, integrity, free and open-source licensing, transparency and decentralisation. The Bitcoin-only principle includes an explicit fork rule: in a hard fork, Btrust follows the chain endorsed by the user majority.
The programmes are layered. Btrust Builders teaches African software developers Bitcoin and Lightning development and positions them as open-source contributors. A Starter Grant funds developers new to open-source contribution for six months full time, and an Open Source Cohort supports experienced contributors working independently. Separate developer, education and event grants are open to applicants from Africa, India, Latin America, MENA and Southeast Asia, and are paid in bitcoin. Btrust also supports monthly BitDevs meetups across thirteen African cities, Lagos, Nairobi and Accra among them.
Btrust describes itself as a non-profit organisation and refers to itself as a trust, but
publishes no registration number, jurisdiction or governing document, so structure is
recorded as Undocumented. The board as of 2026 is Bruno Garcia, Janet Maingi and Lawrence
Aderemi, with day-to-day operations run by a separate team led by Kelvin Isievwore as Head
of Engineering and Stephanie Titcombe as Head of Programs for Btrust Builders. No profiles
are listed here, because the site publishes names and titles and nothing further.
One worked example shows the pipeline closing. Itoro Ukpong, a Java engineer of six years, was selected as a Btrust Builders fellow in 2024, met Bitcoin through the programme, and now holds a full-time Bitcoin Dev Kit Foundation grant funded by Btrust, working on the bindings that let Kotlin and Swift developers use BDK.