Block 788553: Important News of the Week

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News

• Hamas to Stop Accepting Bitcoin Donations Due to Privacy Risk for Donors
• Ohio Man Gets 4 Years For Sweeping Brother's 712 BTC Subject To Forfeiture
• The Kingdom Of Bhutan Confirmed It Has Been Mining Bitcoin For Several Years
• First Republic Bank Seized, Sold to JPMorgan In Second-Largest U.S. Bank Failure
• Venmo Is Rolling Out Bitcoin Transfers to External Wallets
• BlueWallet Postpones Lightning Node Sunset Date to May 31
• 'DM Reporter Bot' Serves A Reminder About The Current State of Nostr DMs
• Ongoing Attack On I2P Network: Bitcoin Nodes Using i2pd Affected
• Samara Asset Group Donates $150,000 To Bitcoin Development, Commits For 3 Consecutive Years
• Coinbase Sued for Harvesting Customer Face and Fingerprint Data
• Balaji Forfeits $1M BTC Bet, Donates Additional $500k to Support Bitcoin Development
• Bitcoin Network Reaches New Transaction All-Time High As Fees Surge Due To BRC-20 Tokens
• Who Benefits From The New York Times' Attacks on Bitcoin?
• Coinbase Launches Offshore Derivatives Exchange
• Biden Administration Proposes A 30% Tax on Bitcoin Mining
• Fedi Raises $17 Million in Series A Round
• Bhutan Plans a $500 Million Fund for Bitcoin Mining in the Himalayas
• Bitcoin Optech #249: MATT-based Vaults, Signature Adaptor Security Analysis
• Summer 2023 Bitcoin Industry Apprenticeship Program Announced
• You Can Buy a Hacked Credit Card for Only $15, A Verified Binance Account for $410, New Report Shows
• OpenSats Receives Additional Funding of $10M From Jack Dorsey's #startsmall
• Binance Admits to Blocking Thousands of Iranian Accounts Needlessly Due To Sanctions
• US Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr Defends Bitcoin Mining
• North Carolina County Bans Commercial Bitcoin Mining For A Year
• Super Testnet Releases A Tool That Breaks Ordinals
• Open Source AI Will Outcompete Google & OpenAI, Leaked Document Claims
• Cash App Sold $2.16 Billion Worth of Bitcoin in Q1, Up By 25% Year Over Year
• India Banned 14 Messenger Apps Allegedly Used For Spreading Terror and Propaganda
• El Salvador's Bill On Eliminating Taxes On Tech Innovations Signed Into Law
• Argentina's Central Bank Bans Financial Institutions From Offering Bitcoin
• Popular Custodial Lightning Service Tippin.me May Be Exit Scamming
• Montana's Right To Mine Bitcoin Bill Signed Into Law

Releases and Updates

• Swap Service: An Orderbook For Performing Submarine Swaps Over Nostr
• Shiro, A Web Wallet Compatible with RGB, Is Now Available on Umbrel
• Galoy Mobile v2.2.34 Released
• Amethyst v0.40.1: Highlighter Support, Global Media Feed, Amethyst v0.42.0: Private & Public Follow Lists
• Munstr: MuSig + Nostr
• Bisq v1.9.10: Performance Improvements and Bug Fixes
• GrapheneOS v2023042900 Released
• Nostr Web Client Primal Adds Search Functionality
• Zap Android Wallet Forked and Rebranded To BitBanana
• Stack Duo v1.0.5: PayNym Fixes
• Nayuta Wallet v0.1.7: Support For No Amount Invoices
• Zeus v0.7.5: New Camera, Payment Path View & More
• Lightning Terminal v0.9.2-alpha: LND Version Bump
• MyNode v0.3.16 Released
• AgoraDesk App v1.1.1: Design Improvements
• Feni v0.1.8: Cashu Wallet & Mint Implementation in Golang
• Alby Launches Nostr Wallet Connect, Now Available on Umbrel
• OstrichGram: A Chat Software for Nostr Network
• Stacker.News Launches Subs For Bitcoin & Nostr
• Nostr-tx-broadcast: Bitcoin Transactions Over Nostr
• nblog v0.4.0: New UI and Authors Page
• Parmanode v2.3.4: BTCPay with Linux Desktop
• Sphinx Relay v2.3.1 Released
• Kind3: Replace Your Nostr Follow List
• Blixt Wallet v0.6.7: Fee Estimation, Passphrases
• CalyxOS v4.9.0: May Security Update
• Ephemerelay: Nostr Relay That Doesn't Care About The Past
• nostr-control: Talk To Your CLN Node Over Nostr DMs
• LNbits v0.10.5 Released (highly recommended update)
• Damus v1.4.3-20: Webp Image Support
• MicroStrategy Lightning Platform Introduced at MicroStrategy World
• Mercury Wallet v0.8.12 Released
• Electrum v4.4.2: Various Bug Fixes
• BlueWallet v6.4.3 Released
• Nostr Sovrn: Personal Nostr, Lightning & Email Addresses

Research

• LNMesh: Offline Lightning Network Payments Using Community Wireless Mesh Networks
• Tracking Growth in Payjoin Adoption
• Bitcoin Fundamentals Strengthen As Recession Looms - ARK Report

Mining Stats

• Bitcoin mining difficulty adjusted downwards by ~1.43%, down to 48.01T.
• Bitcoin hashrate currently sits at ~349  EH/s (7-day simple moving average).
• Bitcoin transaction fees have been steadily increasing through the whole week and almost reached 150 sat/vB for high priority transaction today, per Mempool.space.

Lightning Stats

• The Lightning Network capacity has grown by nearly 2 BTC in the last seven days, while the total node count went up by 81 (+0.5%), despite a minor decrease in channel count (-0.2%), per Mempool.space.