Isn't that what the donated BTC are for?
I'm not sure what the plan is for the BTC, but it doesn't appear to be for dev bounties. I spent 2 months working on my miner for XEL and have tried to contact Lannister for several weeks asking about a bounties for the miner with no response. Not really much incentive to keep working on it at this point.
I was under the impression, that bounties were supposed to be paid out once the mainnet launched. But I think paying at least small bits while in progress may be a good way to keep those working on it motivated
