BitMEX, Human Rights Foundation Award Bitcoin Developer Grants Worth $150K

South Korea-based Calvin Kim works primarily on the bitcoin scaling project Utreexo.

May 31, 2021 at 11:56 a.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 1:04 p.m. UTC

Calvin Kim, a developer who works on improving Bitcoin's scalability, is to receive $150,000 in funding to support his work.

Announced in a blog post on Monday, cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX said it will extend Kim's funding until June 2022 with a grant for $100,000. He previously received $30,000 in August 2020, the exchange said.
BitMEX said it has also collaborated with the Human Rights Foundation, which is also now funding Kim to the tune of $50,000 in bitcoin.
South Korea-based Kim primarily works on the Utreexo project, which has developed a way to store all of Bitcoin's unspent transaction outputs (the record of who owns which bitcoin) in less than 1 kilobyte instead of in gigabytes.
"We are delighted to extend our financial support for Calvin for another year," said BitMEX CEO Alex Höptner. "In particular we are pleased to support a Korean developer such as Calvin, as ensuring the geographic diversity of Bitcoin development is an important factor to consider."
The exchange has provided grants to a number of other Bitcoin developers, including Michael Ford, Jeremy Rubin and Gleb Naumenko.

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