Executive Summary
As an experiment, My First Bitcoin will give 50% of all grassroots donations received from 29 October to 31 December 2026 directly to communities in the Education Network. This article explains why funding is the missing piece for independent Bitcoin educators, how the money will be shared through a public leaderboard of proof of work, and why the program is an open experiment. You will also see why the way Bitcoin education is funded decides whose interests it serves. The takeaway is simple: education funded by the community stays accountable to the community. If you want Bitcoin education to stay impartial, there is now a direct way to help it grow.
Funding Was the Missing Piece
My First Bitcoin already offers independent educators open-source curriculum, like the Bitcoin Diploma, and a global community of educators to learn from. What has been missing is money.
Most educators in the Education Network teach for free. They run cohorts, translate materials and organize events on their own time, often while working other jobs. Funding has come up again and again as one of the biggest challenges they face.
For years, people suggested that My First Bitcoin start a grant program. For years, the answer was no: there was no fair, open way to decide where the money should go.
The leaderboard changes that. It gives a transparent way to decide where money goes, so grants can reward proof of work.
How the Grants Work
For donations received from 29 October to 31 December 2026, 50% of every grassroots donation My First Bitcoin receives will go to communities in the Education Network. The other half supports the work of My First Bitcoin. This is not a large reserve of money handed out at someone’s discretion: it is the donations that arrive during these two months, paid out in Q1 2027.
The distribution follows the public leaderboard. Communities earn points for verified proof of work, such as running a cohort or translating the Bitcoin Diploma into a new language. There are 50 different ways to earn points, 41 of them live today. Anyone can open the leaderboard, click on a community and see what it did, how it earned its points and how that work was verified.
The Education Network currently includes close to a hundred communities. To receive a grant, a community needs to be in the top half of the leaderboard, the top 50. Within that group there are three tiers:
- Top 5: about 11% each of the share for the Education Network
- Places 6 to 20: about 2% each
- Places 21 to 50: about 0.5% each
The gap between the top and the bottom is intentional. Some communities are doing outstanding work that most Bitcoiners have never heard of, and the grants are meant to highlight them. Communities further down the list can see what the leading projects are doing and be inspired to reach higher. A single donation supports 51 projects at once: My First Bitcoin plus 50 communities around the world.
The ranking freezes on 31 December. Communities in the top 50 then opt in between 1 and 20 January 2027, and the funds are paid out by 15 February 2027.
The Bitcoin Education Fund
How the Fund Works →The fund page shows the whole mechanism in one place: how each donation is split, the three tiers of the top 50 and what happens after you give.
Why the Funding Source Matters
There are two ways Bitcoin education can be funded. It can be funded by the community, for the community, by people who value the impartiality of educators. Or it can follow the well-worn path: money from governments and corporations.
There are exceptions, and some great people are working against the trend. But by and large, when governments and corporations fund community education, they expect something back. That return is rarely the empowerment of the individual. It is selling products or spreading a message, usually so subtly that learners never notice. Empowerment becomes a side effect, if it happens at all.
History shows how new technologies get absorbed by the status quo, and funding is one of the main ways it happens. Education is an easy target. This is one of the biggest and least appreciated risks facing Bitcoin today.
My First Bitcoin exists to help build a world where individuals have more agency over their own lives. Bitcoin education is an early and important step on that journey, and it must not be captured. If the Education Network can show that Bitcoin education is best funded by the community, the effects could reach far beyond Bitcoin, and might even encourage other grant programs to rethink their approach.
An Open Experiment, and How to Take Part
This program is an experiment, like almost everything My First Bitcoin does. It rests on a few assumptions: that money will accelerate the good work already happening, that it will push existing communities to reach higher and inspire new ones to start, and that the wider community values impartial Bitcoin education. There is good reason to believe all of that, but nobody knows for sure until it is tried.
There will be criticism, and that is fine. Following the established path does not just fail to challenge the status quo, it reinforces it. A new path means some dead ends along the way, and every dead end is information. The most likely outcome is a good idea that can be done better next time.
My First Bitcoin is a vehicle for a movement of independent educators, not its center. That only works if the community takes part. Here is how:
- If your community is in the Education Network: ask questions, share feedback and challenge the approach. It makes the program better. Questions about projects go to [email protected].
- If your community is not in the network yet: join, then help improve it.
- If you want to support impartial Bitcoin education: now, until 31 December, is a meaningful time to donate. Every donation reaches 50 communities around the world and shows that this model deserves a second, third and fourth round. For donation questions, write to [email protected]; for legal and tax questions, write to [email protected].
