When we founded Brink in 2020, “move fast and break things” for-profit crypto companies were rampant and a “move slow and fix things” Bitcoin non-profit was a low time preference outlier. Now our approach has been thoroughly validated and continues to guide our mission: ensuring that Bitcoin Core contributors have the long-term stability, resources, and community support they need to do their best work hardening this monetary network.
Having recently completed our 2024 accounting audit process, we have compiled Brink’s 2024 annual organizational and financial report.
We provide some highlights from the report below, with the full report available here.
Fundraising
Brink’s donors contributed approximately $6,500,000 toward our mission last year. These contributions came from over 500 different donors.
The support of this diverse donor community, ranging from individuals to institutions, highlights the broad commitment to open-source development.
In the report, we list all of our major donors, who contributed over $5,000 each, and thank them for the crucial role they played in our success.
Expenses
In 2024, Brink’s expenses were approximately $1,800,000. The summary of these expenses include:
- Programs: ($1,494,673)
- Developer Salaries & Grants ($1,201,842)
- Travel ($82,836)
- Office & Research Materials ($128,400)
- General Bitcoin Core Support ($20,049)
- Bitcoin Core Developer Meetings ($42,964)
- Bitcoin Optech ($18,582)
- General & Administrative Expenses ($330,115)
- Staff Compensation ($237,787)
- Operational expenses ($92,328)
- Fundraising ($19,325)
We breakdown these items in more detail in the report.
Note: For clarity and transparency, all financial figures in this report are based on a cash accounting method for the 2024 calendar year. Audited, accrual-based financials will appear in Brink’s public 2024 IRS Form 990.
Organizational Highlights
While more details are available in the full report, we wanted to summarize some of the organizational initiatives that we are proud of.
Our Newest Fellow: Marco De Leon
We were thrilled to welcome a new Brink Fellow in 2024, Marco De Leon (marcofleon). Throughout the year, he has received direct in person mentorship from Niklas Gögge (dergoegge) working on Bitcoin Core’s fuzz testing infrastructure.
Developer Visits to Brink
We’ve increasingly opened our London office as a collaborative hub for visiting contributors. In 2024, we invited individual contributors to join us for extended stays to collaborate. Brink paid travel and accommodations to engineers funded elsewhere to join us in London.
Bitcoin Core Developer Meetings
In 2024, Brink staff, in collaboration with other organizers, supported the Bitcoin Core ”CoreDev Meetings” by fundraising and helping organize two in-person gatherings for Bitcoin Core developers in Lisbon, Portugal and Berlin, Germany. These meetings are essential for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and strengthening the open-source community behind the Bitcoin protocol.
Bitcoin Optech
In 2024, Brink continued to support Bitcoin Optech by assisting with financial management and fundraising efforts. While Optech is an independent community initiative, we’re proud to play a supporting role in helping it thrive.
Outlook
Even with Brink’s “move slow and fix things” mentality, we have initiatives we are excited about in 2025 and beyond including a third party security audit, a bug bounty program, and further expanded testing capabilities.
These new initiatives build on our core focus to support the engineers doing the critical and often-thankless work of maintaining and advancing Bitcoin’s open-source foundations. It is only because of the generous support from our donors that we are able to continue to expand the project’s capabilities. Brink is honored to play a role in this work.
To our donors, partners, engineers, volunteers, and community members, thank you for helping strengthen Bitcoin for future generations.
Mike Schmidt
Executive Director
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