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

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.

See also: Bitcoin Futures Pass $1B in Open Interest on BitMEX for First Time Since March Crash

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.