Bitcoin Magazine

How PlebLab is Shaping the Future of Bitcoin Startups in Austin

Born in the heart of Texas, PlebLab.dev is a well-known name within the Bitcoin start-up world. And yet, most people who have heard about this niche Bitcoin community in Austin are probably unaware of their wins and influence.

Started as a coworking space out of Capital Factory in 2021 by a couple of Bitcoin enthusiasts, PlebLab has grown into a Mecca of the Bitcoin start-up ecosystem in the United States. They host various events and meetups throughout the year and have become a reliable work environment for Bitcoiners, whether living in Austin or just passing through. 

“In art school, I had this professor who’d make us stop after an hour of creating, walk around, and give honest feedback on each other’s work—it built a collaborative vibe where we can grow together. That stuck with me,” Car González, CEO of PlebLab, recalls. So when I took over PlebLab, I asked: ‘How do I make it more collaborative? How do I make it more about that, not just coworking?’ When you say coworking, it’s literally just working. How boring is that—working among other people who are also working? That’s not fun.” 

Yet more than just a “coworking” space, PlebLab has become a “community accelerator for the Bitcoin era” with multiple successful Bitcoin companies and developer celebrities going through it since its inception. 

Genesis

Car González, Keyan Kousha, and Kyle Murphy – foudners of PlebLab

Founded out of the dream to build on Bitcoin and grow a local community, PlebLab got its first office in Capital Factory, a renown tech coworking hub in Austin in 2021. The three cofounders, Car González, Keyan Kousha, and Kyle Murphy started doing Bitcoin meetups that grew to crowds of over 200 people. Among them, various entrepreneurs and Bitcoin developers started to stick around, asking to co-work with them out of Capital Factory. 

Over time PlebLab grew into different office locations, currently installed next to the Unchained Capital offices and the Bitcoin Park (Formerly Bitcoin Commons) in downtown Austin (at 6th St. and Congress Ave.). With more space, talent, and experience, PlebLab transformed from a coworking space into a mix between a hacker garage and a start-up incubator.

Today they offer various membership packages, mentorship, and a wealth of resources to start-ups that join them, but this is not a pay-to-play “Bitcoin We-work”: Memberships can be denied depending on the goals and purpose of the project. It’s more akin to a private Bitcoin club for builders and technologists than anything else.

“I really think we’re an accelerator for the Bitcoin era. How you do that in an open source, cypherpunk way is you don’t give somebody 500k on day one and say, ‘You got three months to make it or see you later.’ To me, that sounds like a fiat-era thing,” said Car.

Main Events

The main events held by PlebLab are Top Builder and Startup Day. Often taking place within six months of each other.

“Top Builder is the Top Chef of Bitcoin. We try to find the latest, greatest builders, pile them in, and get them to build an MVP or something pitchable,” said Car, describing the event which functions like a three-month hackathon, exposing finalists to VCs and angel investors.

Startup Day on the other hand is a short conference that provides a platform for Bitcoin start-ups to present their work, meet talent, and get exposure in the Bitcoin world. In Car’s words it is meant to “inspire people to go from the sidelines to building their own company. They’ll see themselves in those people talking on stage.”

Judge it by its Fruit

A variety of big names within the Bitcoin start-up world have spent time in PlebLab, Car was very hesitant to take credit for the work of others, and stressed his admiration for the founders and leaders whose journey he has witnessed. 

“Seeing their journey go from a person you meet, shake hands with initially, to where they are—seeing the numbers they have, and when they get to a point like base camp, a raise, a pre-seed or seed”, Car said. “That base camp for me is just, ‘Cool, they did it.’ Now, let’s go help somebody else. That’s the thing I love—the shipment of the code, so to speak—We just try to be good stewards of that.”

Nevertheless, the track record is impressive. Here’s a quick overview of Bitcoin projects, companies, and developer celebrities closely associated with PlebLab: 

Jippi – Winner of Top Builder 2025

Lead by Oliver, Jippi.app is a beautiful and fun Bitcoin app designed with Gen Z in mind. Echoing the success of Pokemon Go, Jippi invites young people to explore their cities in search of Bitcoin Beasts, charming little 3D creatures that hide in augmented reality, waiting for future owners with sats rewards.

The app has been in development for over a year and just last week won the first prize in PlebLab’s Top Builder competition among fierce competition. Mind-blowing to the judges and audience alike, Jippi has a live, functioning app, man-on-the-street surveys, and app tests in a local university. As well as a masterful presentation of the rationale and vision for Jippi, the app may have the potential to go viral in the United States — and with it bring a new generation into Bitcoin.  

Stacker.news

Started in 2021 by one of PlebLab’s cofounders Keyan Kousha, Stacker.news has quickly become a hub of news for many tech-savvy Bitcoiners. Boasting an open source Lightning-powered Reddit, the platform has gathered an active and loyal fan base that reward each other with sats for every upvote, often being early to integrate the latest technologies in the Bitcoin-social media tech scene. 

Zaprite 

Started at the end of 2021 by John Magill, Zaprite has quickly grown into a full payment processing suite for businesses, supporting both Bitcoin and Lightning payment rails, settling to fiat as desired by merchants, supporting event ticketing and all the accounting and invoicing tools necessary for a modern merchant. 

Zaprite made recent history by being the interface Donald J. Trump used to pay for a burger with bitcoin at the Bitcoin Pub Pub Key in New York. 

(TRUMP BUYS BURGER WITH BITCOIN FROM ZAPRITE – EMBED)

Mutiny Wallet

Launched in early 2023 and led by celebrity Bitcoin developers Ben Carman and Tony Giorgio, Mutiny Wallet quickly gained popularity among Lightning power users as a fully featured and innovative Bitcoin app. It consistently integrated cutting-edge payments technology like e-cash-denominated payments and Nostr integration, while rocking its signature red-and-black color scheme.

Following the arrest of Samourai Wallet developers and the consequent chilling effect on Bitcoin self-custody wallet development, Mutiny Wallet announced it would be sunsetting the project, nevertheless demonstrating incredible technical ability and leaving behind a sophisticated set of open source software tools for the Lighting, Nostr, and e-cash ecosystem. 

Nifty (Bitcoin++)

As a Bitcoin and Lightning developer, Nifty became famous for her developer education efforts via Base 58, her world-renowned developer events called Bitcoin++, her relentless work ethic, impressive travel schedule, and of course her charm, bringing together Bitcoin developer communities all over the world, multiple times a year.

Nifty has quickly become a recognized and influential figure in the Bitcoin start-up ecosystem, including a seat on the board of directors of Opensats, a public charity focused on funding open source Bitcoin projects of all types, with a special focus on Nostr – the Bitcoin native social media protocol. In her journey to stardom, she spent significant time at PlebLab, and is still often seen at Austin Bitcoin events. 

Speaking of which, Nifty’s next Bitcoin++ event will be in Austin, TX on May 7-9, diving deep into the Bitcoin Mempool.

Supertestnet

An early member of the Plelab and Bitcoin Austin scene, Supertestnet appeared out of nowhere in 2021, quickly mastering the art of creating Bitcoin prototypes in JavaScript. He has since implemented cutting-edge Bitcoin technologies like BitVM, even participating in the first Ark mainnet pool, the only other noncustodial Bitcoin layer-2 scaling solution, and is an avid user of X and Nostr. 

Supertestnet’s many open source projects, passion for Bitcoin, and unshakable integrity have granted him quick recognition in the Bitcoin start-up ecosystem and likely a fair mention in the annals of Bitcoin history.

Cascdr

Led by Jim, AI engineer and ruthless Bitcoin maxi, Cascdr’s mission is to bring the power of AI and Bitcoin together with strong privacy foundations and a full suite of cool AI apps and workflows. His most recent hit is PullThatUpJamie.ai a podcast search engine that transcribes voice content making it searchable, and facilitating the creation of sharable podcast clips. 

BRANTA

Led by Keith, Branta is a cyber security company focused on limiting man-in-the-middle attacks for Bitcoin payments work flows, such as the injection of malicious addresses or invoices in a merchant interface. Grown from the PlebLab accelerator, Branta has already had successful pre-seed raises and was a top-five finalist at the Top Builder contest. 

Topher

A renowned Bitcoin developer in his own right and a regular at PlebLab, Topher has shipped a variety of open source Bitcoin tools such as Tapscript, a library for managing Taproot, Schnorr Signatures, and Bitcoin transactions.

Among other things, Topher and Austin (app developer) are currently working on Frostr, a key management solution for private digital identities. Specifically, Frostr is built to solve issues of the sort in Nostr, the Bitcoin-adjacent social network protocol that’s become very popular with Bitcoin users. It reimagines “Frost,” the new and rising multisignature standard in Bitcoin wallets, and uses it to solve key rotation problems in Nostr. A bit of a technical project, but one which I believe is profoundly useful and I’ll be covering in more detail very soon. 

Christopher David, Open Agents 

Christopher, a seasoned Bitcoin developer and entrepreneur, is currently working on Open Agents, an AI platform with deep integration with Git processes rocking a dark-cypherpunk aesthetic and a strong focus on the privacy of its users.

There are many more projects that are either in development or have gone through PlebLab through the years, if you are interested you can find them at PlebLab.dev. 

As a bonus, I’ll leave you with this cool Bitcoin Magazine yoyo I happened to find at PlebLab.

This post How PlebLab is Shaping the Future of Bitcoin Startups in Austin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ March 26, 2025 12:15 pm