According to a month-old internal document originally drafted by the management team of the Bitcoin Foundation and which has now been openly published, the foundation is considering splitting into two separate organizations.

One of these organizations would effectively be the continuation of the current foundation, but reorganized as a promotional body. The other would be a made up of the core development team, split off to focus exclusively on development of the core protocol — which is currently the Bitcoin Foundation's mission.

Although the newly released document indicates that the change might also make sense for tax purposes, the main reason for the proposed restructuring of the foundation seems to be its weak financial status, as exposed recently by newly elected board member Olivier Janssens.

The year 2014 was particularly disastrous for the foundation, as it lost some US$4.7 million worth of assets due to expenses and a falling bitcoin price. Since Patrick Murck was appointing as executive director in October of 2014, he cut monthly losses significantly and has since volunteered to take himself off the payroll. Despite this, the foundation is running out of funds quickly, and at current spending rates could run out of funds within a month. It may be a matter of interpretation, however, whether this represents an "effective bankruptcy," as Janssens has phrased it. The board of directors in an official statement denied bankruptcy.

If the proposals to restructure the foundation are approved, this would mean a reorganization according to the "Mozilla approach," as opposed to the current "Linux approach." For the foundation itself, it would entail it becoming a promotional organization.

Although many of the details of what exactly this would encompass are not included in the document, what is clear is that the foundation would focus foremost on public relations for Bitcoin, while it would also be involved with organizing a number of conferences. Additionally, the foundation could still lead funding efforts for a second organization that would exclusively focus on the development of Bitcoin core. This way, the foundation would require minimal staffing, and could cut down on expenses even further.