By EZ in Weekly Digest — Sep 22, 2024

Block 862412: Important News of the Week

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

Here are slightly more than 3,600 words describing the things and events that happened in Bitcoin and related freedom tech last week. Keep on shipping the goodies, and we'll do our best to cover it all.

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News

Bitcoin mining facility shutdown raises town residents' energy bills by 20% in Norway. Kryptovault's Bitcoin mining facility in Stokmarknes, Norway, recently closed due to noise complaints. The Hadsel municipality didn't renew the operating permit, and the mine's closure impacted local energy company Noranett, which lost its largest customer. To offset this loss, Noranett raised electricity prices, causing residents to face a 20% increase next month.
Free Samourai: 8TB+ of discovery, motion to dismiss charges, Rodriguez's bail modifications denied. Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill attended a pre-trial hearing in the Southern District of New York. Defense attorneys argued that Samourai Wallet does not constitute a money transmitting business. Rodriguez's request to modify his bail conditions was denied. The next hearing for pretrial motions is scheduled for December 17th, 2024, at 10 AM ET.
HRF Bitcoin Development Fund grants 10 BTC to 20 projects worldwide. This round of grants targeted technical education in authoritarian regions, Bitcoin development conferences, decentralized mining, and privacy-focused financial solutions for human rights groups, especially in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Find the full list of grantees here.
Vinteum establishes Bitcoin Developer launchpad in Brazil. This free program aims to train and empower Brazilian developers who are working on open-source Bitcoin and Lightning Network projects. Participants will receive mentorship, attend in-person sessions in São Paulo, and present at the bitcoin++developer conference from February 19-24, 2025, in Florianópolis. Registration is open until October 2.
Rust for Bitcoiners course is now available for free at BTCdemy. It includes recorded lectures, visual diagrams, quizzes, and practice challenges to help you master the fundamentals of Rust. GitHub link is available here.
First Maelstrom Bitcoin Developer Grant awarded to Rkrux. Arthur Hayes's family office has granted its first Bitcoin developer award to Rkrux, enabling him to work full-time on Bitcoin Core open-source contributions. "We look forward to identifying more grant candidates that will be instrumental in strengthening the Bitcoin ecosystem," said Arthur Hayes.
SimpleX Chat is now blocked in Russia. The project team said it is working on a solution.
- SimpleX Chat v6.1-beta0 is testing support for SOCKS proxies both in iOS (via TestFlight) and Android (via Github releases).

MicroStrategy adds 18,300 BTC to its coffers. The company made yet another purchase for approximately $1.1 billion, bringing its total holdings to 244,800 BTC, acquired for $9.45 billion. At current prices, MicroStrategy's Bitcoin trove is worth over $14 billion.
- MicroStrategy to issue $700 million of convertible senior notes. The company plans to use the proceeds to redeem $500 million in senior secured notes with a 6.125% yield maturing in 2028. The remaining funds will be used to buy more bitcoin and for general corporate purposes.
US urges Nigeria to free imprisoned Binance employee, reports The New York Times. Tigran Gambaryan visited Nigeria in February to discuss Binance's local operations. Nigerian authorities accused Binance of harming their economy by enabling users to exchange local currency, the naira, thus causing its collapse. They then charged Gambaryan and Binance with tax evasion and money laundering.
Block template similarities between mining pools. 0xB10C shared a follow-up analysis on potential mining pool centralization, confirming earlier findings that some of the major pools are effectively acting as the same entity.
- "These pools together have about 37.6% of the network hashrate. However, it's far from proven that the same entity is behind pool these," added the analyst.

Debt-free budget for El Salvador in 2025. During El Salvador's 203rd independence celebration, President Nayib Bukele announced the country's fiscal independence. For the first time in decades, the new General Budget will be self-financed without external debt. The budget will be submitted to the Legislative Assembly on September 30. The 2024 budget gap was $338 million on total spending of $9.1B When Bukele took office in 2019, the deficit was $1.2 billion, reports CoinDesk.

"This is a historic moment for El Salvador. We will no longer spend more than we produce annually. The benefits of this approach will be immediate and will grow each year, contributing to a more robust economy and a financially independent nation," Bukele said.

Bhutan holds 13,029 BTC from Bitcoin mining operations. Chain surveillance firm Arkham Intelligence is tracking the kingdom's holdings here.
Louisiana State Government accepts first bitcoin payment. Louisiana residents can now pay for state services from their private bitcoin (on-chain and via Lightning) and USDC wallets, although the state will immediately convert all payments to USD via Bead Pay. The first payment via Lightning was made yesterday to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to acquire a hunting license.
Geyser stops serving conflicting regions. Bitcoin crowdfunding platform Geyser announced it has stopped serving conflicting regions. The platform stated that "it wasn't an easy decision," adding that "the movement of funds is increasingly a point of scrutiny."

"We do not custody, administer, or control any funds contributed to the projects at any time. Additionally, we aim to avoid the possibility of these funds falling into the wrong hands. Accepting and listing such projects could necessitate implementing increasingly intrusive measures to verify the identities of creators, which we prefer to avoid," added the project.

Affected regions include sanctioned countries such as Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, Russia, as well as Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen.

BlackRock published a new report calling Bitcoin a unique portfolio diversifier. The report examines the significance of Bitcoin, what makes it unique, and recommends modest allocations for a 'diversifying effect on portfolios.'

"Over extended time horizons, we believe bitcoin’s adoption drivers are likely to be distinct from, and in some cases inverted with, the global macro factors that drive most traditional financial assets," said the report authors.

Cathedra Bitcoin announces BTC as primary reserve asset. After seven years in the mining business, Canadian Bitcoin miner Cathedra Bitcoin (CBIT) is altering its focus. The company is now shifting to developing data centers and plans to use the profits to purchase bitcoin instead of mining it.

"The last three years have demonstrated to us that Bitcoin mining is not a reliable way to grow shareholders’ bitcoin per share. Indeed, nine of the ten largest (by market capitalization) publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies hold less bitcoin per share today than they did three years ago," the company stated in the memo, adding that companies like MicroStrategy, which focus on increasing bitcoin per share, have been rewarded by equity markets.

Florida man to serve 47 years in prison for robbing bitcoiners. Remy St Felix received a 47-year prison sentence for leading a crew in violent home invasions targeting Bitcoin and cryptocurrency owners, and stealing $3.5 million through force and SIM-swapping with 13 co-conspirators.
Federal Trade Commission published a report on fraud at Bitcoin ATMs. According to the FTC, Bitcoin ATMs have become an increasingly useful tool for scammers. The agency found that, since 2020, fraud at these ATMs has surged nearly tenfold. In the first half of 2024 alone, consumers lost over $66 million to scams involving these beautiful machines.

Bitcoin-only exchange River has launched Proof of Reserves. This feature allows clients to verify that their bitcoin holdings on the platform are fully reserved. You can view River's reserves here.
- "Our tool empowers all our clients to verify our reserves regardless of technical ability while providing more advanced users the tools they need to run in-depth local verification (see the code on Github here)," writes CEO Alexander Leishman in a blog post.

CleanSpark acquired two bitcoin mining sites in Mississippi. The miner announced that it has agreed to acquire two sites near Clinton, Mississippi, for $5.7 million. These sites have a combined capacity of 16.5 megawatts (MW).
Bitfarms accelerates 2.2 EH/s hosting agreement with Stronghold. "Bitfarms will be accelerating the deployment of 10,000 Bitmain T21 miners, originally scheduled to come online at the Company’s Yguazu, Paraguay site in December 2024, to Stronghold’s Panther Creek site. Energization is anticipated in October 2024 and will bring 2.2 EH/s online immediately," the company said in a press release.
Merkle Standard is expanding to Memphis, Tennessee. The North American Bitcoin mining firm has secured a contract from the city-owned utility company Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) for a power supply of up to 45 MW. The contract took effect on August 1, 2024, reports The Miner Mag.
Asian exchange HTX to integrate Lightning Network. The platform announced strategic partnership with IBEX to enable faster transaction and lower fees for its customers.
LQWD Technologies partners with Alby. Through this partnership, LQWD will provide Alby Hub users with robust liquidity solutions, as stated in a press release.
ShopinBit is expanding to Switzerland. The largest European Bitcoin e-commerce platform, with over 200,000 products, said it will launch in Switzerland in less than 30 days. Swiss users can sign up for local updates here.
Nostrdam is set to take place on October 8, a day before Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024. Get your tickets here. Register for a hackathon here.

Updates and releases

Sparrow Wallet v2.0.0 introduces the ability to recover SLIP39 shares, support for Trezor Safe 5, Ledger Stax, and Ledger Flex, and an update to Java and JavaFX 22, among many other improvements.
Liana v7.0 is out. It focuses on enhancing the user experience, especially in wallet setup. It introduces Electrum support for self-sovereign use and Liana Connect for easy bootstrapping. Additionally, it now works with new signing devices, implements fee sniping protection, and delivers a variety of other user-requested features and fixes.
Unchained launched donor-advised funds (DAF) in partnership with University Impact. A donor-advised fund is bitcoin-native charitable giving vehicle that enables one to make a contribution, receive an immediate tax deduction, and then recommend grants to charitable organizations over time.
- Learn more about Unchained DAF's here.
Keeper Desktop v0.1.1 has been released. It is a secure, cross-platform desktop app for using hardware wallets with the Bitcoin Keeper mobile app. Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Keeper Mobile v1.2.15 has also been released. It comes with ability to use Canary Wallet for the Recovery Key, flexibility to delete vaults while having sats in them, and UX improvements.
Selfie Records by Synonym. Selfie Records is an extension to the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 353, expanding the concept of DNS-based resolution of payment instructions to a broader application of identity and data verification through DNS TXT records.
Phoenix Android v2.3.9 and iOS v2.3.4 releases address a few UI issues, including a bug that prevented scanning QR codes for Lightning addresses when they used a URI prefix.
Fulcrum v1.11.1 is a minor update that adds support for testnet4.
Super Testnet introduced Brick Wallet, a basic web wallet that acts as a frontend for Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) backends. Check it out here.

Dana Wallet v0.1.0-alpha is the first public release of Dana Wallet. It is a mobile wallet for accepting Bitcoin donations. It uses silent payments to receive donations while preserving on-chain privacy. This initial release supports Bitcoin mainnet, testnet3, and signet.
Alby Hub v1.8.0 adds the Alby Go app to the Alby Hub App Store. The Hub has also received some mobile UI improvements and updated copy in the Friends & Family app.
Bull Bitcoin Mobile v0.3.2 brings more stable chain swaps, better handling of refunds, and various bug fixes and optimizations.
Mercury Layer v0.2.1 adds a terms and conditions agreement for token invoice generation and now displays the server version number in Explorer and Info/Config.
BoardWalk Cash v0.3.1 introduces ecash gifts or eGifts. Each eGift has a unique ecash value and can be shared on any social media or messaging platform.
- BoardWalk Cash v0.3.2 patches issues with cross-mint swaps.
BDK v1.0.0-beta.4 fixes transaction creation to not skip unused addresses, adds a function for sorting wallet transactions, and includes an option to change the default BNB fallback coin selection.
Boltz Client v2.1.6 includes a fix for a race condition that can occur when creating multiple swaps at once.
LN Exchange launched phase 2 of closed early access testing. Only whitelisted npubs can actually try it but you can join the dev chat here.
SatShoot is creating unstoppable freelance economy on Nostr. Get paid and hire in bitcoin (on Lighting and soon ecash).
ShockWallet v0.0.9-beta is now available on Android.
- ShockWallet v0.0.11-beta delivers some fixes and improvements.

New in ShockWallet and Lightning Pub, NIP-69 Nostr Offer STRings

A more performant, private, trustless, and decentralized replacement for LNURL and Bolt12 pic.twitter.com/w2S341wPXL
— Justin (shocknet)⚡ (@shocknet_justin) September 10, 2024

NLightning v0.2.2, an implementation of the Lightning Network protocol in C#, adds support for WebAssembly and native crypto tests.
Mutation Core is a mutation testing tool for Bitcoin Core.
stacker.news now supports account switching, anon edits, and video uploads.
Doug Hoyte released v1.0.1 of strfry, a popular Nostr relay implementation. Highlights include negentropy protocol 1, better error messages for users and operators, updated documentation, and numerous optimizations. Future updates will include strfry proxy to enable intelligent reverse proxying for the Nostr protocol, as well as archival mode.
Amber v2.0.1 has been released with new developer sign keys, meaning that to use this version you will need to first backup your accounts, uninstall the old version and install the new version.
zap.store CLI v0.0.5 comes with improvements around app publishing to make it easier for developers to self-sign their releases.
BraiinsOS v24.08.1 brings refined paused logic and a critical bug fix for safer and more stable miner shutdowns.
Nodana is a hosting service dedicated to Bitcoin and Lightning software. Check it out here.

Tor Browser v13.5.4 is here. It's a small cross-platform release that addresses several bugs.
- Tor Browser v14.0a5 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and distribution directory.
Peer-to-peer chat app Keet v3.10.0 is now out on desktop and mobile.
Keychat App v1.19.7 chat app comes with ability to import existing nSec, and now allows the creation medium groups.
- Keychat App v1.19.10 is a bugfix release for medium groups.
Nix Bitcoin v0.0.113 is out with the latest package updates.
Alby Go v1.5.0, a simple lightning mobile wallet interface and a companion app for Alby Hub, comes with an onboarding help screen, fiat currency picker, ability to copy transaction details, and more.
sats.mobi is a Bitcoin Lightning wallet on Telegram with built-in point-of-sale functionality, Scrub function, and NFC card management.
WoT Relay v0.1.10 brings an option to run relay without syncing from other relays.
Mullvad VPN added support for DAITA on Linux and MacOS. The team also added Multihop feature to its iOS app.
Marti Malmi added cashu.me wallet to beta.iris.to. "When you sign in as a new user, you're all set to send and receive zaps without configuring anything. It sets [npub]@npub.cash as your lightning address," said the developer.
Fedimint v0.4.2 has been released.

Coinos.io web wallet enabled Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC aka NIP-47) support.
Bringin, a financial application serving users across Europe, now let's its users connect their Blink account.
Lightning Terminal v0.13.4-alpha includes updates to the integrated versions of LND v0.18.3-beta and Loop v0.28.7-beta.
Blitz Wallet bounty for a react-native package for the Liquid Wallet Kit (LWK) has been fulfilled. "Wallet app developers now have the option to use the new LWK-RN in their iOS and Android builds, when building a mobile wallet that is Liquid and Lightning interoperable," announced the Liquid Network.
Mein Coffee is a 700 GH/s Bitcoin mining coffee warmer by GekkoScience. Check it out here.
Peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange Hodl Hodl announced a brand-new redesign with a fresh logo and visuals that reflect peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, self-custody, and decentralization.

Meanwhile, Peach Bitcoin marketplace added Strike as a payment method for the EUR and GBP markets.
Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI) v3.1.0, a minor release, brings support for recent Trezor Safe 5 and new Ledger signing devices, as well as some binary build compatibility fixes.
BitBox02 firmware v9.20.0 brings Bitcoin UX improvements for payment request confirmations.
- BitBox App v4.44.0 adds support in-app sales via Pocket Bitcoin.
Blockstream Green Android v4.0.34 updates several dependencies and includes various bug fixes.
Elements v23.2.3 is the latest release of the open-source software that underpins Liquid and other Elements-based sidechains. The developers added initial support for discounted fees for Confidential Transactions (ELIP-200), aimed at reducing network fees by nearly 90%. This feature is now available on the Liquid testnet, allowing Liquid wallets and platforms to start integration and testing.
- The update also brings greater flexibility for peg-out operations, and adds several fixes to improve overall network stability and performance.

Padawan Wallet v0.14.1, the bitcoin wallet trainer on Android, now fully supports the Portuguese language and includes numerous UI fixes and updates, such as incorporating the new edge-to-edge Android standard.
Nunchuk Android v1.9.51 now supports reproducible builds. Nunchuk iOS v1.9.54 is a small release with bug fixes and improvements.
Neutronpay App and Bitcoin wallet has launched in Singapore.
Speed Wallet introduced swaps between BTC and USDT-L.
Lightstack by massmux is an 'Automagic Self-Custodial Cloud Lightning Stack.'
bullishNuts v0.0.71 fixes issues related to receiving ecash from different mints.
Coracle v0.4.10 is out. It's mostly a maintenance release with lots of performance and some visual improvements. It also includes a large refactor to use @welshman/app utilities, which may be helpful for aspiring Nostr client developers, said hodlbod.
ngit v1.5.0, a command-line tool for code collaboration over Nostr, brings a new Nostr URL format that should work better for macOS users, status updates during clone, push, and fetch, and intelligent Git protocol selection during fallback, among other things.
Coop v0.2.0, a Nostr-based direct message client for desktop, is out with some UI, stability, and performance improvements.
Voltz Swap Out service by Voltz Wallet has been launched. It lets you swap your sats in ecash or Lightning directly to your on-chain Bitcoin wallet.
- "If you’re a node runner, you can use Voltz Swap Out to open inbound liquidity without needing to buy channels or to get on-chain funds to sell channels," said the developer.
SimLN v0.2.3, a payment activity generator for the Lightning Network developers, has been tagged.
GDK v0.73.0 is the latest (pre)release version for the Blockstream Green Development Kit.
GrapheneOS v2024091700 has been released with a number of updates and improvements.
Parman announced BitVotr, a P2P protocol for running elections. "Voters can vote from the privacy and comfort of their homes with their computer, and can verify the total count is correct and their own vote has been counted," he said.
Strike launched Smash Buy Target Orders and Outgoing Wires.
Nomad Network is a tool for off-grid, resilient mesh communications with strong encryption, forward secrecy, and extreme privacy.

New Robosats' Android app pre-release https://t.co/a71JQRAfOt

This one requires heavy testing, since it contains a lot of refactoring in the client side (affecting also web, Desktop and others).

It also includes the possibility of disable the permanent notification.
— KoalaSat (@koala_sat) September 18, 2024

Guides and research

Good First Issues is a tool for simplifying contributing to vetted Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Bitcoin projects. It collects beginner-friendly issues labeled as Bug, Help Wanted, and Good First Issues, so new developers can find their way in Bitcoin.
Burak introduced NOIST: a non-interactive, single-round t-of-n threshold signing scheme. Learn more about it in a blog post, or watch the introductory video here.

Cypherpunktools.com provides a comprehensive list of privacy tools with a selection hosted by privacy-focused VPS provider Mynymbox.io.
Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #321 links to a proof-of-concept implementation for proving in zero-knowledge that an output is part of the UTXO set, describes one new and two previous proposals for allowing offline LN payments, and summarizes research about DNS seeding for non-IP network addresses.
BTC Sessions published a comprehensive tutorial for running Alby Hub.