By EZ in Weekly Digest — Aug 26, 2024

Block 858445: Important News of the Week

News. Updates. Research. Stats. Everything Important You Need to Know.

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News

Bitcoin's issued supply passed the 94% milestone. According to the Clark Moody Bitcoin dashboard, there are slightly more than 1.2574 million BTC left to mine.

US Treasury and Federal Reserve plan to redefine 'money.' U.S. federal agencies plan to redefine 'money' as used in the rules of the Bank Secrecy Act to tighten reporting requirements for financial institutions regarding domestic and cross-border cryptocurrency transactions. The proposed rulemaking is expected by September 2025, pending clearance.
Ghana released draft guidelines for cryptocurrencies. The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has drafted new regulations in response to the growing popularity of digital assets like Bitcoin and USDT. According to the draft, Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) operating or planning to operate in the country must seek authorization from the BoG or the SEC, depending on their offerings.
- Responses and recommendations regarding the proposed measures to the Bank of Ghana by or before August 31, 2024. Submissions should be sent to FinTech@bog.gov.gh.
Australia took down over 7300 scam websites since July 2023. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) announced the takedown of over 5530 fake investment platform scams, 1065 phishing scam hyperlinks, and 615 cryptocurrency-linked investment scams.
Greenidge Generation sued the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to prevent the agency from shutting down its bitcoin mining operation next month, reports The Miner Mag.
Watch Out, Bitcoin 2024 conference will take place in Madrid, Spain, on September 27-29.

OpenSats grants long-term support for Vitor Pamplona. Vitor is the creator of the Amethyst nostr client for Android and an architect of the new hyper-private DM protocol. He has also developed Sheetstr, a collaborative spreadsheet client, and Crafters, a nostr-based resume builder.
Bitcoin Dev Kit (BDK) announced new full-time grantees. These include Rust/Golang developer and one of the architects of BDK v1.0, Evan Lin; Android engineer thunderbiscuit, who maintains the Padawan Wallet and leads the work on language bindings and the BDK Kotlin Example Wallet; Matthew Ramsden, an experienced iOS engineer focusing on language bindings and the Swift Example Wallet; and ValuedMammal, a Rust developer and node operator whose work includes research in mempool and P2P areas. A complete list of current BDK grantees can be found here.
Spiral grants. Nick Johnson is the latest Spiral grantee. He is working on improving privacy with BIP324, a Rust library that enables light client encrypted messages.
- Spiral renewed grant to Vasil Dimov for the fifth time. Vasil will use it to continue his work on reviewing pull requests for Bitcoin Core and Stratum V2.
- Spiral also renewed grant for Alyssa Hertig, who is working on LNDK, which aims to implement BOLT 12 functionality externally to LND.
UK National Crime Agency's Risk Assessment. The UK National Crime Agency's latest Risk Assessment finds that "cryptoassets are increasingly used to launder non-digital proceeds of crime" and names increased risks to children through end-to-end encryption. However, the assessment provides no concrete data to back up its claims and stands in direct contrast to industry findings, reports L0la L33tz for The Rage.

Nigeria to introduce cryptocurrency tax law. Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) said it intends to introduce a bill to tax bitcoin and other digital assets to parliament by September. "We just have to plan to regulate it in such a way that it is not injurious to the economic development of Nigeria," said Zacch Adedeji, Executive Chairman of the tax collection agency, according to local reports.
- Per Bloomberg, Nigeria's SEC also plans to issue first virtual-asset licenses this month.
- Last month, cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin announced it was starting to collect VAT on transaction fees for Nigerian users.
Metaplanet now holds over 360 BTC. Japanese investment firm announced that it purchased an additional 57.273 bitcoin worth about $3.4 million. The latest purchase comes as part of the plan announced on August 8 after Metaplanet secured a $6.8 million loan to buy more bitcoin.
Malaysian police steamrolled close to a 1000 bitcoin miners. According to Malaysia Gazette, the Perak Tengah District police carried out the destruction of 985 bitcoin miners using a steamroller at their headquarters on Monday. The machines, worth about $450,000, were seized during raids targeting electricity theft since 2022. This action is part of ongoing efforts to combat 'illegal' mining operations that have plagued Malaysia since 2017.

Ibu Pejabat Polis Daerah (IPD) Perak tengah melupuskan 985 peralatan yang digunakan dalam kegiatan perlombongan Bitcoin dianggarkan bernilai RM1.98, pada Isnin.#IPDPerak #Lupus #bitcoin

Video: Amirrul Rabbani Rashid pic.twitter.com/kEgdqTopCH
— Malaysia Gazette (@MalaysiaGazette) August 19, 2024

National Public Data published its own passwords. KrebsOnSecurity found that NPD's sister site, recordscheck.net, hosted an archive with administrator usernames, passwords, source code, and plain text login credentials until August 19. The site has a similar design and login pages as nationalpublicdata.com.
100+ Bitcoin merchants in Madeira. F.R.E.E. Madeira has announced a milestone of onboarding over 100 local merchants to Bitcoin.
Sovereign Engineering Cohort 3. The third edition of SEC, focusing on ecash and Nostr, is set to take place from October 14 to December 6, 2024. Learn more about it here.
El Salvador to launch Bitcoin certification for public servants. The government of El Salvador plans to enhance the skills of 80,000 employees through a detailed Bitcoin certification program focused on strategic management and public policy. The National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) is said to provide the training and certifications.

"These education projects are very low time preference commitments to the long term success of El Salvador and its bitcoin (& tech) policy. For we have yet another major announcement to make soon on education that will make you go WOW," said Stacy Herbert, Director at The Bitcoin Office.

Voltage to deprecate Flow v2.0. "Starting September 1st, we will no longer issue new channels from our API. Channel closures will commence on November 1st. Anyone with a channel to the LSP (including ones in Mutiny Wallet) should send out their funds and do a cooperative close at their earliest convenience," announced Voltage CEO and Founder Graham Krizek.

"We aren't just leaving the Lightning Network without solutions. We are working on a radically new system that will produce a far superior experience. We've gained years of insights into how people use Lightning and what matters most. We're shifting our Flow 2.0 resources to create the most advanced Lightning system in existence. We'll share more as we have it," he added.

FinCEN's regular wallet KYC proposal officially dead. In 2020, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed KYC requirements for regular Bitcoin wallets, prompting immense backlash from the industry. The proposal faced a major setback when the comment period was extended by 15 days, ensuring President Joe Biden would be in office instead of Trump/Mnuchin. Although the rule occasionally resurfaced, it was never seriously reconsidered. Finally, on August 19, 2024, the proposal was officially withdrawn.
Tim Draper leads $2.5m funding round for Ark Labs. Ark Labs announced the completion of a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round led by Tim Draper and his firm, Draper Associates.
Germany Bitcoin ATM raid. German authorities confiscated $28 million and 13 Bitcoin ATMs in a nationwide operation targeting unlicensed activities.
Bitfarms to acquire stronghold digital mining. Bitfarms will expand its U.S. bitcoin mining capacity via a $125 million stock-for-stock merger with Stronghold Digital, also assuming $50 million in debt. CEO Ben Gagnon stated the deal follows three years of discussions.
Riot Platforms nears 20% stake in Bitfarms. The company invested $10 million more since August 15 to acquire 4.5 million additional Bitfarms shares, totaling 19.9% holdings as of August 20, reports The Miner Mag. Bitfarms adopted a "poison pill" strategy, granting shareholders one right per share, exercisable if any entity acquires 20%+ of Bitfarms' shares without a "Permitted Bid."
Lightning startup TMRW raised $1.3M to develop a social, cross-border payment app leveraging the Lightning Network for speed and low fees for remittances.
Gryphon Digital Mining acquired ultra low-cost Bitcoin mining operations at ~$0.01/kWh. The company has entered into an agreement to acquire up to 2.9 MW of Bitcoin mining operations powered by ultra low-cost electricity in the $0.01/kWh range in Louisiana, at a cost of $1.5 million.

Updates and releases

Ark v0.2 is here. Ark is a layer-two protocol designed to scale Bitcoin transactions. The release includes covenant-less Ark implementation, offline payments, client SDKs, MutinyNet support, and enhancements to Ark's codebase and documentation.
Bisq v2.1.0, the latest Bisq 2 update, brings support for the Lightning Network as an additional Bitcoin settlement method, a QR code scanner, upgraded chats, improved Tor startup, and more.
BlueWallet v7.0.0 release adds a toggle to disable privacy blur, lock screen widgets for iOS, and makes BIP-47 payment codes available to everyone (you have to enable it in wallet settings).
RaspiBlitz v1.11.2 is a quick patch addressing a bug related to new wallet creation in Core Lightning. If you are already running a Core Lightning wallet or using LND, an update is not required.
LbtLightning released Payjoin Flutter library v0.18.0 for the Payjoin Dev Kit, making it easier to integrate Payjoin into Flutter Bitcoin apps.
0 xchat v1.31-beta has been released. Voice calls can now continue in the background, multi-account switching is supported, and group admins can now delete messages for everyone, among other features.
Wikifreedia v0.0.9, a free and open alternative Nostr-based alternative to Wikipedia, drops Markdown in favor of AsciiDoc.
Mostro v0.12.4, a P2P exchange on Nostr, includes a few small improvements.
Lightning Bot v1.0.4, a Telegram bot for managing one's Lightning node remotely, introduces enhanced system monitoring, better error reporting, and code refactoring for improved security.
Swiss Bitcoin Pay app v2.1.1 update includes fee updates, an added Dockerfile builder, and fixes for on-chain payments.
Strike has introduced ACH bank transfers for US businesses. The firm now also supports currency swaps in P2P transactions.
Stacker.news has added Blink as an attached sending wallet, and fixed auto-withdraw issues.
CASCADR launched a stacker.news bot that can summarize Fountain podcasts, ELI5 complex tech debates or even argue for/against a debate point in the tone of Donald Trump.
bitaxeGamma is the 5th major revision of the fully open-source bitaxe Bitcoin ASIC miner, now including the BM1370 ASIC from the Antminer S21 Pro. "So far we've been able to pull 1 - 1.2 TH/s at around 15 J/TH from a single chip," said @skot9000.
Stratum Benchmarking Tool v0.1.0 has been released. It is a comprehensive tool for measuring Stratum V2 and Stratum (V1) protocol performances in different contexts, designed to help the mining industry understand and benefit from the new protocol.
ZEUS Wallet v0.9.0-rc1 is now available for testing.
Olympus by ZEUS has also announced integration with Alby Hub.
Phoenix Server v0.3.3 (phoenixd) adds an alternative authentication method for websocket, adds payerNote + payerKey to incoming payment events, and implements a fix for webhook exceptions.
Chantools v0.13.2, a tool for rescuing funds locked in lnd channels, has been released.
SATSuma v2.5.0 has been released. It is a free and open-source Bitcoin explorer, Xpub viewer, Bitcoin and Lightning dashboard available on Windows. It offers the option to create encrypted bookmarks and notes for addresses, blocks, xpubs, and transactions, view network, on-chain, and market charts, or use it as a 'watch-only' wallet.
lnlp2pbot v0.11.0. This peer-to-peer Lightning Network Telegram trading bot now includes a new /privacy command, clearer messages for users, bug fixes, and code/documentation improvements.
Fedi app v1.18.5 fixes crashes on iOS 15 and provides better logs for bug investigation.
Zaprite introduced recurring invoices. The Bitcoin invoicing platform now supports Recurring Invoices that can be adopted to almost any payments schedule.
YakiHonne mobile app v1.3.3. The latest update for a Nostr-based media platform that supports blogging, flash news, curation, videos, uncensored notes, zaps, and other content types, includes multiple fixes, such as manual sats amounts, second-time voting for zap polls, zap requests for Amber signer, and more.
NostrDVM v0.8+, a framework for running NIP-90 Nostr Data Vending Machines (DVMs) now supports nutzaps (beta).
Angor, a crowdfunding platform built on Bitcoin and Nostr, is now available for testing.
clnrod is a Core Lightning (CLN) plugin that allows or denies incoming channel opens based on lists and/or a custom rule.
Cake Wallet v4.19.4 adds ability to scan and verify messages.
ePIC Blockchain has released UMC firmware v0.51.5 for supported Bitmain miners.
HT Pool by HodlTarantula is now live.
Floresta v0.6.0, a fully-validating Bitcoin node powered by Utreexo, with an integrated Electrum Server, is now available for testing. This release introduces libflorestad, enabling easy Floresta integration by any wallet or application, enhanced JSON-RPC, BIP-158 compact block filter integration, an embeddable library for the daemon, Signet support for PoW fraud proof, extensive testing, and more.
- Full details about the update are available here.
SeedSigner v0.8.0 brings additional legacy signing support, various quality-of-life improvements, explicit support for PSBTs with OP_RETURN, limited support for Electrum seeds, and much more.
Wherostr is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play. It is a Nostr-based social media client that lets you discover and attach geographic coordinates to notes.
LDK v0.0.124-beta has been tagged.
Tor Browser v14.0a2 has been released with important security updates to Firefox.
GrapheneOS v2024082000 is the latest update for an open-source, privacy and security-focused mobile operating system. GrapheneOS v2024082200 fixes a regression introduced in previous release.
Fully Noded - Join Market - a dedicated Join Market native iOS client is now available on the TestFlight. Get it here.
Fountain v1.1. Fountain, a Lightning-powered value-for-value podcasting app, is now a Nostr client. Your Fountain profile syncs with your Nostr profile, making your activity visible across the Nostr ecosystem.
RGB v0.11 beta 7 released. This release features many bug fixes and improvements, such as introspection of global contract state from scripts, improved handling of blockchain re-orgs and RBFs, improved Lightning operations, hot Taproot RGB wallets, efficient managing of RGB contract state in enterprise and embedded environments, and support for Mempool API and Testnet4.
Blockstream Green mobile v4.0.32 for both iOS and Android is here. Both versions update Breez to v0.5.2 and GDK to v0.72.2. The Android version now allows for custom gap limits on personal Electrum servers and adding comments on LNURL payments, while the iOS app comes with improved LNURL auth and withdraw.
BitAxe Bot. This tool allows you to view stats and overclock or underclock your mining machine remotely via a Telegram bot.
BlueWallet v7.0.2 fixes several bugs and adds total balance in the overview screen.
BitBanana v0.8.5 adds BOLT12 support for Core Lightning Nodes, BOLT 12 contact types, Lightning Terminal accounts support for LND nodes, and more.
Trezor Suite v24.8.3 implements enhanced protection against counterfeit devices for Trezor Model One and Trezor Model T.
Multisig bitcoin vault maker Theya has launched a buy bitcoin feature for its US-based users. Additionally, it now supports a QR code-based interaction with Foundation devices.
Stacker.news integrated a random sort section for posts, as well as support for NWC receive strings for NWC attached wallets.
Nodeyez v24.08, a tool for producing various display panels based on your Bitcoin node, comes with numerous updates and bug fixes.
Mostro Web Client v0.0.27, a Nostr-based P2P bitcoin client, implements new color schemes, basic dispute resolution, and improved event management for private messages, among other things.
Npub.pro launched experimental support for importing content from Ghost to Nostr.
Coracle v0.4.9 is a maintenance release adds person zaps, restores the delete function, fixes group notifications, and includes other quality-of-life improvements.
Amber v1.31 now groups multiple events, fixes issues with reject button, and updates project's dependencies.
The latest Nostur TestFlight update adds early preview of Nostr Nests integration, adds live streams integration with chats, and more.

Research and guides

Surveillance Watch offers an interactive map revealing intricate connections between surveillance companies, their funding sources, and affiliations.
Michael Stewart shared a comprehensive guide for setting up Alby Hub.
The Anatomy of Bitcoin is an open-source, community-funded film aimed at presenting a visual understanding of the mechanisms that make Bitcoin work.
WantClue published 'The Ultimate BitAxe Setup Guide.'
Rusty Russell joined Brink engineers to discuss the Great Script Restoration proposal.
The latest issue of the Bitcoin Optech newsletter summarizes a discussion about an anti-exfiltration protocol that only requires one round trip of communication between a wallet and a signing device.
Here is a small demo of a stock data API using L402 using Replit in less than 100 lines of code.