Matt Odell joins the show to discuss OpenSats’ 17th grant round, and Ben Carman also joins to explain why the Austin Bitdevs meetup is saying sayonara for now.

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Welcome back to The Blockspace Podcast! Today, Matt Odell, Co-founder of OpenSats, joins us to talk about their 17th wave of grants and the importance of funding open-source Bitcoin privacy projects, and Spiral bitcoin developer Ben Carman hops on to explain why the longest running Bitdevs meetup is taking a break. We also dive into the $270M Drift Protocol exploit and the sophisticated social engineering tactics used by North Korean hackers. Plus, we cover Charles Schwab launching Bitcoin trading, the first investment bank rating for Keel Infrastructure (formerly Bitfarms), and how a solo miner secured a $250,000 block reward. 

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Notes:

- Drift Protocol lost $270M in a painstaking hack.

- OpenSats has distributed over $33M in grants from ~10,000 donors

- OpenSats grants ~$1M in Bitcoin every month.

- Solo miner earned $250,000 for a single block.

- Charles Schwab to offer spot BTC and ETH trading in H1 2026

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:32 Strait of Hormuz: A Citrini Field Trip

06:33 Drift Protocol (SOL) Hack

15:15 Matt Odell: OpenSats 7th wave of grants

32:45 Ben Carman: Austin BitDevs go bye bye

48:09 Bitfarms becomes Keel

54:38 Charles Schwab opens BTC trading

59:11 Solo miner wins block

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