The Bitcoin ecosystem
126 organisationsCompanies, open-source projects, non-profits, foundations and DAOs, each with how it is actually constituted, who is behind it, and where the claim comes from.
Listing is not endorsement. Entries are here because they are part of the record, and several have been sued, sanctioned or shut down. Where that is public record the entry says so. Marks belong to their owners and are shown for identification.
ACINQ
CompanyLightning
A Paris company that maintains Eclair, one of the Lightning implementations, and ships the Phoenix wallet and phoenixd node alongside its own routing node.
Africrypt
CompanyInvestment Scheme
A South African bitcoin investment operation that stopped paying investors in April 2021 after telling them it had been hacked, and was placed in provisional liquidation that month.
AlphaBay
MarketplaceDarknet Market
A Tor marketplace that took bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from 2014 until an international law enforcement operation seized its infrastructure in July 2017.
Anchorage Digital
CompanyCustody
A United States digital asset custodian whose banking subsidiary holds a national trust bank charter granted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in January 2021.
Armory
Open Source ProjectWallets
The desktop wallet that made air-gapped cold storage and multi-signature usable in 2011, abandoned by the company behind it in 2016 and carried since by one maintainer.
Bakkt
CompanyCustody
A Delaware company started inside Intercontinental Exchange that ran the first physically delivered bitcoin futures alongside a New York chartered custodian, and that sold that custodian back to ICE in 2025.
Binance
CompanyExchange
The exchange operated by Binance Holdings Limited, a Cayman Islands company that pleaded guilty to United States anti-money-laundering and sanctions charges in 2023.
Bisq
Open Source ProjectExchange
Desktop software that lets two people trade bitcoin for national currency directly, with no company holding the funds and no account to open.
Bisq DAO
DAOGovernance
The governance and funding layer of the Bisq exchange, run through BSQ tokens that are coloured satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain rather than a token on another chain.
BitClub Network
CompanyMining
An operation that sold shares in bitcoin mining pools and paid members for recruiting others, and which a United States federal court has been told took at least $722 million.
Bitcoin Beach
Non-profitCircular economy
A community project in El Zonte, El Salvador that used a single anonymous bitcoin donation to build a local economy where wages and everyday purchases move over Lightning.
Bitcoin Core
Open Source ProjectProtocol
The reference Bitcoin implementation: full-node validation software, an optional wallet, and the related cryptography libraries, released under the MIT licence.
Bitcoin Design Community
Open Source ProjectDesign
An open community of designers that produces the Bitcoin Design Guide, a free reference for anyone building non-custodial Bitcoin products.
Bitcoin Dev Kit
Open Source ProjectWallet Library
A suite of Rust libraries and language bindings for building Bitcoin wallets, stewarded by the Bitcoin Dev Kit Foundation, a United States 501(c)(6) non-profit.
Bitcoin Ekasi
Non-profitCircular economy
A township project in Mossel Bay, South Africa that pays surf coaches entirely in bitcoin and onboards local shops so the wages can be spent without converting to rand.
Bitcoin Knots
Open Source ProjectFull Node
An alternative Bitcoin full node implementation, derived from Bitcoin Core and released under the MIT licence, carrying configuration options that Core does not ship.
Bitcoin Magazine
MediaMedia
The oldest publication devoted to Bitcoin, owned since late 2014 by BTC Media and now part of BTC Inc, a subsidiary of the listed company Nakamoto Inc.
Bitcoin Mining Council
Industry BodyMining
A voluntary forum of large Bitcoin miners that published quarterly self-reported energy and hashrate surveys, with no public output since 2023 and no live website.
Bitcoin Optech
Industry BodyNewsletter
The Bitcoin Operations Technology Group, which publishes a weekly technical newsletter and runs workshops to help Bitcoin businesses adopt open source scaling techniques.
Bitcoin Policy Institute
Non-profitPolicy
A Bitcoin-only think tank that publishes policy research and briefs American legislators and regulators.
Bitcointalk
MediaForum
The discussion forum Satoshi Nakamoto opened in November 2009, where the pizza trade, the first exchange announcements and most early Bitcoin development argument took place.
BitConnect
CompanyLending
A lending programme that took bitcoin deposits and promised returns from a trading bot, which United States courts have established was a Ponzi scheme.
Bitfinex
CompanyExchange
The margin trading venue operated by iFinex Inc. and its affiliates, which lost 119,754 bitcoin to a breach in 2016 and settled with the New York Attorney General in 2021.
Bitfury Group
CompanyHardware
A privately held group that built bitcoin mining chips and infrastructure and now operates mainly as an investor and incubator, with stakes in listed miners.