**Tether’s $250,000 Donation to OpenSats Sparks Jack Dorsey Criticism and Bitcoin Community Debate**
This week, stablecoin giant Tether announced a $250,000 donation to OpenSats, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding the development of free and open-source Bitcoin software. The contribution aims to support OpenSats’ operations and grant-making efforts. However, the donation amount quickly became a topic of public debate after one of the world’s best-known programmers and Bitcoin maximalists, Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, openly criticized the gift.
Shortly after Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino publicized the donation, Dorsey took to X (formerly Twitter) to lampoon the size of the gift, bluntly asking, “Why only $250K?” Tether is among the crypto industry’s most profitable companies, having posted a $13 billion profit last year and reportedly seeking a $500 billion valuation in discussions with potential investors. Despite this, the company had yet to respond to Dorsey’s comment at the time of publication.
Dorsey’s critique quickly drew attention, and another X user challenged the tech billionaire on his own financial contributions to supporting Bitcoin developers. Dorsey responded promptly: “Over $21 million. You?” Indeed, OpenSats received a $21 million donation earlier in 2024 from Dorsey’s Start Small initiative, underscoring his long-standing advocacy for decentralized technology and censorship resistance.
Nevertheless, Dorsey faced criticism as well. Udi Wertheimer, the creator of the popular Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards, initially supported Dorsey’s position but soon criticized him for his investments in Ocean, a Bitcoin mining pool. Ocean has been controversial for discouraging the processing of non-financial transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, including the creation of NFT-like Ordinals.
Wertheimer remarked, “No one should go into a pissing match with Jack when it comes to funding open-source Bitcoin development,” but added, “You should subtract from that number whatever the size of your Ocean investment was. Sadly, that capital is being actively deployed to slow down development.”
As the discussion unfolds across Crypto Twitter, it serves as a reminder that even prominent figures in the Bitcoin community face scrutiny—and that the dynamics of funding open-source development are often complex and contested.
https://decrypt.co/344800/only-250k-jack-dorsey-prods-tether-donation-support-bitcoin-devs
