BitMEX Owner Awards $50K Grant to Bitcoin Smart Contract Developer

100x said the $50,000 grant to Jeremy Rubin would help fund further development of the Bitcoin smart contract language, Sapio.

Jul 22, 2020 at 1:29 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 9:34 a.m. UTC

Arthur Hayes (left), CEO of BitMEX, and Chase Lochmiller, general partner at Polychain Capital, speak at Consensus: Invest 2017. (Brady Dale/CoinDesk archives)

The parent of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has given $50,000 to the Bitcoin Core contributor who revealed last week he was working on a smart contract language for bitcoin.

100x Group announced Wednesday it had awarded a one-year grant to Jeremy Rubin, as part of its Open Source Developer Grant program.
The Seychelles-based company, which recently changed its name from HDR Trading, has already given similar grants to fellow Bitcoin Core contributors Michael Ford, Amiti Uttarwar and Gleb Naumenko.
A Bitcoin developer since 2011, Rubin said last week he was developing a new programming language, Sapio, for a full smart contract capability on the Bitcoin protocol.
He has also established a new research organization, Judica, that plans to develop and release new software tools for Bitcoin.
Per the announcement, 100x said the grant would help make Judica financially sustainable and further fund research into Bitcoin's mempool – the protocol's store of pending transactions.
Established in 2014, BitMEX's primary product is its bitcoin perpetual contract – trading volume stood at $800 million at press time, according to CoinGecko.

EDIT (July 23, 10:45 UTC): Some details of this article have been clarified after conversation with Jeremy Rubin about the nature of the grant.

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