By EZ in Weekly Digest — Sep 15, 2024

Block 861441: Important News of the Week

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

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News

OpenSats now supports Mike Dilger and Jason Donenfeld:
- Mike Dilger is the lead developer of Gossip, a secure, privacy-focused nostr client using Rust. Gossip is a reference for the "outbox model," a design enabling more scalable nostr message distribution.
- Jason Donenfeld is the creator of WireGuard, a secure VPN protocol, and primary author of the Linux kernel's RNG. WireGuard secures node and data center communications, while the Linux RNG generates cryptographic keys essential for Bitcoin's security.
10101.finance is shutting down. "We've done a lot of reflecting, and we know what we have built is not receiving the traction and growth we wanted it to have. We also know it won't scale easily to the masses either, due to technical limitations," said 10101 founder Philipp Hoenisch.
Nayuta Wallet is shutting down, too. The project will be shutting down its Nayuta LSP node in three months, and Lightning Network transfers will no longer work in the Nayuta Wallet. Users are recommended to close existing channels and transfer their funds to other Lightning wallets.
Bitcoin Dada launched Developer Program for Women in Africa. The program aims to enhance women's development and coding skills. It provides hands-on training, educational sessions, and a collaborative environment to help women engage in Africa’s tech landscape.
Kraken halts support for the Lightning Network for German customers. The exchange recently moved to BaFin regulated banking provider DLT Finance, reports The Rage.

ARK 21 Shares ETF diversifies custodians with Anchorage Digital and BitGo. With this move, the ETF issuer aims to enhance safety and security from online threats, hacking, and cyber-attacks, while increasing diversification in the digital asset investment landscape.
Monochrome Bitcoin ETF (IBTC) to implement proof-of-reserves. Monochrome Asset Management partnered with Hoseki to offer daily proof-of-reserves for its Bitcoin holdings. This integration also allows direct Bitcoin applications and redemptions, ensuring privacy and transparency.
Metaplanet buys more bitcoin. The publicly listed Japanese company said it had purchased 38.6 BTC for 300 million yen (~$2.2 million). It now holds 398.8 BTC, reports Bitcoin Magazine, whose parent company UTXO Management is also an investor in Metaplanet.
Japan's largest electricity provider explores Bitcoin mining. Agile Energy X Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), is exploring Bitcoin mining using renewable energy sources. "What we are doing has few parallels in Japan. Success of our framework would prompt more green energy to be introduced," said Kenji Tateiwa, president of the company.
CleanSpark to acquire seven bitcoin mining facilities in Tennessee totaling 85 megawatts (MW) of power capacity as well as associated properties for cash payments of $27.5 million. The company expects to close the transaction by September 25th and install 5 EH/s of newly arrived Antminer S21 Pros across the sites.
Antpool, F2Pool to support Fractal Bitcoin merge mining. Two of the top five bitcoin mining pools now support merge mining with Fractal Bitcoin, a sidechain launched on Monday. Fractal Bitcoin uses "Cadence Mining," allowing bitcoin miners to merge-mine every third block, while the other two blocks are for Fractal Bitcoin miners only. The sidechain supports BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals, aiming to offload these transactions from the Bitcoin network, writes The Miner Mag.
- Meanwhile, @dimahledba identified important security issues in the official Fractal Bitcoin Docker release.
Venezuelan army seizes 35 Bitcoin miners. Strategic Operational Commander Domingo Hernández Lárez stated that the operation lacked the required permits and licenses for mining in Venezuela. The country mandates registration for mining, cryptocurrency exchanges, and digital asset services.
India leads the world in cryptocurrency adoption. According to the latest adoption report by blockchain surveillance firm Chainalysis, India is followed by Nigeria and Indonesia. Overall, the report finds increasing adoption in the region of Central and South Asia and Oceania (CSAO).

The total number of active Bitcoin ATMs decreased by 0.9 % in August. Canada saw the most activity this month with 53 new ATMs (1.8% increase), while New Zealand added 39 ATMs (31.7% increase). The United States had the most removals, with 343 ATMs removed (1.1% decrease) due to Digital Mint closing operations in August, per CoinATMradar report. BitAccess and Genesis Coin were the most active manufacturers.
"No legal crypto ATM operators in UK." The UK's financial regulator charged Olumide Osunkoya, a 45-year-old in London, for running a £2.6 million ($3.4 million) network of unregistered bitcoin ATMs. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) alleges he operated these ATMs, processing millions between December 29, 2021, and September 8, 2023, without its approval.
- "There are no legal crypto ATM operators in the UK," added the regulator.
Bill to classify bitcoin as personal property introduced in UK. The UK Parliament introduced the Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill to legally recognize Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and other digital assets as personal property. Once enacted, it will help determine ownership in legal disputes and protect crypto owners from scams and fraud.
New version of EU Chat Control bill leaked. In the latest variation of the bill, providers would be free to choose to use AI to classify unknown images and text as suspicious but must search and report known illegal content, even if it breaks end-to-end encryption. EU governments will decide on the proposal by 23 September, and EU interior ministers will endorse it on 10 October, reports Patrick Breyer.
Android apps are blocking sideloading and forcing Google Play versions instead. Ars Technica reports that sideloaders of apps via Tesco, BeyBlade X, and ChatGPT have reported "Get this app from Play" prompts, which cannot be worked around.
At least 280 Android apps use OCR to steal cryptocurrency. Disguised as official apps from banks, government services, and utilities, they scan infected phones for text messages, contacts, and stored images, sending this data to remote servers. Distributed via malicious sites and phishing messages, none of these apps were found on Google Play.
FBI reports a 45% surge in losses tied to cryptocurrency fraud in 2023. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 69,000 cryptocurrency-related complaints, totaling $5.6 billion in losses. These amount to 10% of financial fraud complaints and about half of the total losses, reports The Block.
Swan warns of another phishing campaign. "We just became aware that this fake phishing email was sent to some Swan clients. Do not follow any instructions in this FAKE email," said the company.

Fed hits United Texas Bank with cease-and-desist order for serving 'Virtual Currency Customers.' The Fed issued a cease-and-desist order to United Texas Bank last Wednesday for "significant deficiencies" in adhering to anti-money laundering laws, especially in dealings with cryptocurrency customers. The company has previously collaborated with firms like the Stellar Foundation and Circle's USDC.
- This is the second time in a month the Federal Reserve has acted against a 'crypto-adjacent' bank. In August, the Fed found "significant deficiencies" in Customers Bancorp, Inc.'s risk management and anti-money laundering procedures.
Standard Chartered launches Bitcoin custody service in UAE. The service, licensed by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), follows a May 2023 memorandum of understanding. The bank chose the UAE for its balanced digital asset adoption and financial regulation.
Worldcoin account sales investigation in Singapore. Bad actors illegally selling Worldcoin accounts and tokens are under investigation in Singapore for potential money laundering and terrorism financing. On August 7, Singapore police warned against selling or giving away Worldcoin accounts or tokens to prevent their use in criminal activities.
Indonesian crypto exchange Indodax goes offline following a $22M hack. Multiple blockchain investigation firms alerted to an attack on an exchange's hot wallets, which was confirmed by the firm. Over 25 BTC was stolen, along with many more altcoins. Co-founder of the exchange, William Sutanto, stated that Indodax will cover all user losses from the hack.
eToro will pay $1.5 million to settle SEC charges for operating an unregistered broker and clearing agency. Moving forward, U.S. customers can only trade Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether on its platform.
Banxa enables Lightning in partnership with Zero Hash. Banxa users can now make fiat-to-crypto on-ramp and off-ramp transactions via the Lightning Network.
Bitcoin Oasis conference postponed to 2025. "Due to unforeseen circumstances, Bitcoin Oasis 2.1 postponed to 2025. We’re committed to delivering an exceptional event and appreciate your understanding. Stay tuned for updates—we can't wait to welcome you next year," said the event organizers.
Bit Block Boom 2025 to take place on April 3-6, 2025. Event tickets are available at https://bitblockboom.com/.

Updates and releases

RoboSats v0.7.0-alpha is here. This version comes with Android built-in torified notifications, a RoboSats desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and a Nostr-enabled order book.
LND v0.18.3-beta complements some of the features launched with v0.18.0 and also addresses bugs which were encountered and reported after the launch.
COLDCARD Mk4 v5.4 & Q v1.3 firmware upgrade brings the ability to restore geographically distributed SeedXOR without physically bringing the parts together, improved side channel protection, speed improvements, and many bug fixes.

BlueWallet v7.0.4 is now available on iOS, Android, and macOS. This release makes advanced mode options available contextually on each screen top right options.
BitKit v1.0.4 delivers notifications on transfer activity, enables RBF and improved CPFP functionality, improves the transfer flow experience, and delivers a variety of bug fixes and improvements.
LNbits v0.12.11 includes a bunch of fixes and refactors, new funding sources, more developer tests, dependency updates and some UI improvements.
Phoenix Wallet Android v2.3.8 release fixes an issue related to the legacy mode which could crash the app and includes improvements to the navigation and screen lock system.
Blitz Wallet v0.2.7-beta is the first Blitz beta to include experimental support for eCash.
Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.10 brings ability to log in with singlesig watch-only wallet, ensures the application is usable with a smaller window size, and improves detection of the Tor circuit.
Sentinel v5.1.0, a watch-only bitcoin wallet tracker for managing multiple wallets and addresses on Android, has been released. It comes with bug fixes, UI changes, updated Tor library, PSBT enhancements, and other improvements.
Foundation Passport v2.3.2. This version of Passport’s firmware brings ephemeral seed support, adds the ability to sign messages via QR code, and introduces a connection flow for Fully Noded.
BitBox announced that BitBox02 is the first hardware wallet with capability to send silent payments. "Support for sending to silent payment addresses will be made available to all BitBox02 users in a future update," the project said in an accompanying blog post.
Mercury Layer v0.2.0 update fixes vulnerabilities (disclosed by CONDUITION here) related to malicious backup transactions bypassing receiver verification checks.
Amethyst v0.91.0 finishes Edge to Edge transition for Android 15, adds compression settings to the media uploading screen, introduces sliding animations in all inner screens, enables the use of hidden words for all visible properties of the user, and more.

New Damus TestFlight release is available to Damus Purple subscribers. It brings push notifications and ability to create Highlights in Safari.
Utreexod v0.4.1, a fully validating Bitcoin node with Utreexo support, comes with a couple of bug fixes.
Alby Extension v3.9.1 is out. It includes several bug fixes, translation updates, adds a new identifier for authentication URLs, and other minor improvements.
Alby Go v1.4.2, a simple mobile Lightning wallet interface and a companion app for Alby Hub, is out with several fixes and improvements.
Cashu-ts v1.1.0, a JavaScript library for Cashu wallets written in TypeScript, is out now. This release is focused on the new Cashu token format v4, drastically reducing token size via CBOR encoding.
Cashu Dev Kit v4.0.0 is out. Check out the release notes here.
0xchat v1.3.3 adds SOCKS proxy settings and .onion host options. Push notifications can now be received by connecting to at least one default general relay.
Citrine v0.4.4 is the latest bug fix release for a local Nostr relay on Android devices.
utxo published Web of Trust Relay. It is a Nostr relay that saves all the notes that people you follow, and people they follow, are posting. It's built on the Khatru framework.
powcoins is a tool for obtaining coins sent to PoW-faucet addresses on the Bitcoin signet network:
Nostrize is a browser extension that empowers any website with the Nostr experience.

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Fren Relay is a nostr relay that allows posting only for people you follow using NIP42 Authentication.
Wikistr is a wikipedia-style client for nostr.
Foro.kiwi by KoalaSat is an old-school forum-styled long-form Nostr client.
Nos.social v0.1.26 brings quote-reposting, a new image viewer, in-app profile photo editor, and a variety of bug fixes and improvements.
stacker.news fixed issues with Alby's NWC relay, adds ability to zoom on images and play videos from notifications, and support for Wawlake, Nostr, and Spotify embeds, among other things.
Live Wallet v0.7.0, a desktop application to help users understand their current and future UTXO fee burdens, comes with a consolidation mode - a feature to help with consolidating UTXOs.

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Live wallet demo video.

CLN App v0.0.6 is the latest release of the official Core Lightning application by Blockstream.
Swiss Bitcoin Pay app v2.1.2 comes with better support for underpaid on-chain payments.
Marti Malmi launched new.iris.to with a spam-free (ReplyGuy-free) experience. Now it hides replies from people who are not in your social graph, and also includes the 'Adventure' feed displaying all notes from your social graph.
Tails 6.7 is out. The release includes update to OnionShare from 2.2 to 2.6, which now comes with ability to create an anonymous chat room.
Voyage v0.14.0, a lightweight Nostr client for Android, brings the ability to optionally show usernames in feeds, set q tags when mentioning events, and add client tags to posts and replies.
Radicle v1.0 is a new alternative peer-to-peer, local-first code collaboration stack built on Git.
bconf.org is a new website aiming to list all Bitcoin conferences happening all over the world.

Guides and research

Ron Stoner is documenting a list of known attacks on the Nostr protocol.
A tutoria l on how to set up an Onion Site by Super Testnet is now available on PlebTV.com.
BTC Sessions released a comprehensive tutorial on how to use Wasabi Wallet to hold, CoinJoin, and secure your bitcoin.
Learn how to run your full self custodial stack: phoenixd + letsencrypt + nginx + lnbits from your own domain name here.
Bitcoin Optech #320 announces a new testing tool for Bitcoin Core and briefly describes a DLC-based loan contract.

Mining stats

Bitcoin mining difficulty rose 3.6% to a record 92.7T this week, surpassing the previous high of 90.67T from July 31, 2024.
The average network's hashrate (7-day SMA) is currently at ~654 EH/s.