BitDrum wins the DevFest Kaduna Bitcoin Build-a-thon
BitDrum has won the DevFest Kaduna Bitcoin Build-a-thon. The Bitcoin wallet, built by a Kaduna-based team, took first place out of 21 teams at the Btrust-sponsored hackathon, with winners announced at DevFest Kaduna.
The top three
- BitDrum: a Bitcoin wallet that lives inside Claude and pays over Lightning when you ask it to.
- Safe Hands: helps hackathon teams split prize money fairly. Members agree and sign the split upfront, and once the prize arrives, everyone receives their share automatically.
- BitFarm: helps farmers accept Bitcoin.
Teams built on 29 October, submitted that evening and demoed their projects on 30 October.
A closer look at BitDrum
AI assistants can now research, draft and plan, but they still cannot pay for anything. The moment money is involved, you have to leave the chat, open a wallet, copy an address and send it yourself.
BitDrum closes that gap. It connects to Claude, so you can manage payments in plain language. Ask it to “send Amaka 1,000 sats for the logo”, and it sends the payment over Lightning in seconds. You can also check your balance, create invoices, save payees and view receipts in the same chat.
Crucially, the AI can only ask to spend; the human approves. Each wallet has per-payment and daily limits, and anything above them needs Face ID or Touch ID. The wallet also stays locked until you unlock it with your passkey.
Users can hold their balance in sats or in Bitcoin USD, a dollar-stable option, so spending money does not swing with the Bitcoin price. They can also pay out in the stablecoins USDC and USDT.
BitDrum is built for freelancers paying collaborators, remote teams sending money across borders, and Bitcoiners who want stable spending money. It is already live on Bitcoin mainnet at bitdrum.xyz.
The team behind it is Abdulsamad Sadiq (Otaiki) and Samuel Onanike (Eagle) of Cracked Studios, an AI-enabled software company based in Kaduna. Follow BitDrum on X at @usebitdrum.
Why Northern Nigeria deserves the spotlight
Most of the attention in Nigerian tech goes to Lagos and Abuja. Funding, events and hiring tend to follow it there.
The DevFest Kaduna Bitcoin Build-a-thon tells a different story. A packed room, 21 teams and a winning product already running on mainnet show the talent is there, waiting for the right opportunity.
The same is likely true in Kano, Enugu, Anambra and other cities that rarely get the spotlight. Btrust’s bet on Kaduna shows what happens when organisations go to developers instead of waiting for developers to come to them.
For Bitcoin companies, funders and event organisers, the lesson is simple: look beyond the usual hubs. The next BitDrum may already be building there.