On June 10, 2020, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) launched a fund that is dedicated to the development of tools that make the Bitcoin network “more private, decentralized, and resilient.” HRF’s initial gift of $50,000 will be given to the UK-based developer, Chris Belcher, who has been working on a project called Coinswap.
This week the well known, Human Rights Foundation (HRF), announced the launch of a fund that bolsters codebase development of coin mixing applications for bitcoin (BTC). The New York City-based HRF is very well known and is also the organization behind the Oslo Freedom Forum. HRF’s gift of $50,000 will help fuel Coinswap development led by the well known developer Chris Belcher. Coinswap is a mixing protocol that leverages Coinjoin and it was introduced in 2013. Additionally, “in the protocol, all parties are assumed to have private communications channels,” explains the concept’s creator Greg Maxwell. The Coinswap Github repository says:
A Coinswap implementation for massively improving Bitcoin privacy and fungibility.
Further, HRF will be funding other types of bitcoin (BTC) development in the future. “The fund’s next gift, already earmarked for another developer working on strengthening Bitcoin pseudonymity at the network level, will be announced in the near future,” HRF’s announcement explains. HRF chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein says that the organization is proud to help fund tools that promote financial privacy.
“HRF is pleased to support Chris in his quest to make Bitcoin more usably private,” said Gladstein. “Human rights defenders and reporters around the world face increasing financial repression in the form of frozen bank accounts, restrictions on foreign funding, payment surveillance, and general difficulty in earning income or receiving donations. Bitcoin can be a powerful tool for
