Points of Focus

• Bitwise donated $233,000 from its Bitcoin ETF profits, part of its pledge to allocate 10% of BITB’s annual profits to Bitcoin’s open-source development.
• Spot Bitcoin ETFs took over 10 years to get approved after the first US application in 2013.
• Newly released Epstein files revealed past funding links to Bitcoin development, but no protocol influence.

Bitwise Asset Management donated $233,000 to three open-source Bitcoin developer organizations on 4 March using profits generated by its spot Bitcoin ETF. Up from $150,000 in 2025, this second annual donation of its kind marks an emerging pattern: the institutional products that profit from Bitcoin are now funding its underlying infrastructure.

The money is drawn from 10% of BITB’s annual gross profits, distributed among Brink, OpenSats, and the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund. Bitwise’s Bitcoin ETF holds over $2.8 billion in AUM at the time of writing, and the firm’s total assets under management stood at $15 billion at the start of 2026.

As part of our annual commitment to support Bitcoin open-source developers, Bitwise is proud to donate $233,000 to support the unsung heroes maintaining and securing the Bitcoin network.

This year marked significant growth for the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF ($BITB), making this… pic.twitter.com/wjEoLHDVsY

— Bitwise (@Bitwise) March 4, 2026

Bitwise co-founder and CTO, Hong Kim, described open-source developers as Bitcoin’s most essential and overlooked contributors. He added that the obligation to reinvest in those who maintain the protocol mirrors how any financial institution maintains its own infrastructure. The firm noted that future contributions are set to grow as BITB’s AUM expands.

One important distinction remains: Bitcoin Core does not depend on donations like these to function. The protocol is maintained by a globally distributed contributor base, with no single entity – donor or otherwise – holding authority over its development.

Took ten years to get in

The SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs on January 10, 2024. That approval came almost 11 years after Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed the first US application on July 1, 2013. Between 2018 and March 2023, the SEC rejected more than 20 spot Bitcoin ETF applications, citing market immaturity and inadequate safeguards against manipulation.

The first Bitcoin ETF application was submitted in 2013 when the price of Bitcoin was sub $100. After a snappy 10 years of bureaucracy and 500x, the approvals are upon us.

We've seen massive innovation and infrastructure development in crypto over that time period (i.e. what…

— Dave Ripley (@DavidLRipley) January 11, 2024

Bitwise was among the firms included in the January 2024 approvals. At launch, the company committed 10% of BITB’s gross annual profits to Bitcoin’s open-source ecosystem. As the ETF’s assets grow, the size of those contributions increases as well. 

Spot #Bitcoin ETFs have been officially approved by the @SECGov

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
Bitwise Bitcoin ETF
Hashdex Bitcoin ETF
iShares Bitcoin Fund
Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund
ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF
Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF
Vaneck Bitcoin Trust
WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund
Fidelity… pic.twitter.com/PXUGs7iFVV

— Zach Rynes | CLG (@ChainLinkGod) January 10, 2024

Epstein files complicate Bitcoin’s funding story

The scrutiny around who has historically funded Bitcoin’s development gained new dimensions in early 2026, when the US Department of Justice released millions of pages of documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein. Among the records were details showing that Epstein had reportedly invested around $500,000 in Blockstream, the Bitcoin-focused company founded in 2014. The investment was made as a limited partner in a fund managed by MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. 

Exposing how Jeffrey Epstein was linked to the early Bitcoin ecosystem🚨

The 2026 DOJ document release shows Epstein wasn’t a creator of Bitcoin

But he was close to early funding, investors, and crypto in its first years.

– Blockstream Investment (2014)

Epstein invested… https://t.co/RlSXsMIG7O pic.twitter.com/TtxhlFcO1V

— StarPlatinum (@StarPlatinum_) February 2, 2026

Funds tied to Epstein were also reportedly used to support MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative in 2015. At the time, the initiative employed Bitcoin Core contributors Gavin Andresen, Wladimir van der Laan, and Cory Fields, after the Bitcoin Foundation had declared bankruptcy. 

That said, no publicly released document places Epstein as Bitcoin’s author, a protocol decision-maker, or as Satoshi Nakamoto. What the records establish is financial proximity during a period of institutional vulnerability. However, Bitcoin’s decentralized architecture proved its resilience: no individual backer could leverage their capital to hijack the codebase, a stress test the network continues to pass to this day.