Block 870857: Important News of the Week

Last week, No Bullshit Bitcoin received about 300,000 sats in donations (~$270). A big thank you to everyone who's helping to keep this effort going.

News

• Bitcoin Fog user Roman Sterlingov gets 12.5 years for allegedly running it based on 'junk science.' Sterlingov was sentenced to 150 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $395 million and seized assets worth around $1.76 million on Friday. Additionally, he was ordered to forfeit 1,345 BTC from the Bitcoin Fog wallet, valued at over $103 million.
  • Sterlingov's case is branded as the case that "put cryptocurrency tracing on trial" as the prosecutors did not find any smoking-gun criminal evidence from his belongings or devices upon his arrest. Instead, the charges rely on a blend of blockchain tracing, IP address matching, and connections between online accounts, as outlined in the statement of facts released when charges were made public in April 2021.

• Coinkite takes down GitHub repository of free and open-source BTClock project. Bitcoin hardware devices manufacturer Coinkite submitted a trademark infringement request to GitHub to terminate BTClock's repository due to phonetic, visual, and functionality similarities. BTClock is a free and open-source, do-it-yourself project inspired by Coinkite's BLOCKCLOCK. The project's repositories are still available here.

Just some thoughts about this clock crisis. pic.twitter.com/d0HWAiyLgl

— Bitcoin Brabant (@BitcoinBrabant) November 16, 2024

• Polymarket CEO gets raided by the FBI. On Wednesday, federal law enforcement agents conducted a search of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's home. During the operation, authorities seized Coplan's phone and other electronic devices. It is noted that Coplan has neither been arrested nor charged with any misconduct.
• The Tor project issues update on IP spoofing attack. "Thanks to a joint effort from the Tor community, InterSecLab, and the support of Andrew Morris and the team at GreyNoise, the origin of these spoofed packets was identified and shut down on November 7th, 2024," stated the project.

"We want to reassure everyone that this incident had no effect on Tor users. While the attack had a limited impact on the Tor network - taking a few relays offline temporarily - it caused unnecessary stress and inconvenience for many relay operators who had to address these complaints. Although this attack targeted our community, IP spoofing attacks can happen with any online service."

• Kenya: tourists to be exempted from declaring IMEI numbers upon arrival. The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) announced a directive on November 6 mandating that only tax-compliant devices can be sold and connected to Kenyan networks. Effective January 1, 2025, individuals importing mobile devices into Kenya, whether for sale, assembly, or personal use, must declare each device's International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number at customs. The agency has since clarified that tourists will be exempt from this measure.

"KRA has announced that tourists will NOT be required to declare their gadgets' IMEI numbers upon arrival. Kenya's strategic location as the gateway to East Africa positions it as a regional hub for tourism and business and must therefore remain easily accessible," said Tourism Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Miano on Friday.

• OpenSats announced long-term support for m1sterc001guy. m1sterc001guy is the main maintainer of the Fedimint Lightning Gateway, crucial for linking federated communities to the Bitcoin Lightning network and ensuring smooth payments.
• The Bitcoin Dev Kit team shared its Q3 update. During Q3 of 2024, the project has been refining the API of the bdk_wallet crate. They have released four new beta versions (1, 2, 3, and 4) and are targeting a final v1.0 release by the end of 2024.
• Bitcoin surpassed silver as the 8th largest asset in the world. Its market capitalization has reached $1.752 trillion, surpassing silver's $1.726 trillion.

• MicroStrategy buys another 27,200 BTC for $2.03 billion. The purchase was made at ~$74,463 per BTC. The company now boasts a BTC yield of 7.3% this quarter and 26% year-to-date. MicroStrategy now holds 279,420 BTC, worth approximately $23 billion, acquired for ~$11.9 billion at average price of $42,692 per coin.
• MARA added 6210 BTC to its reserves in Q3. The bitcoin miner now holds 26,747 BTC, having mined 2,070 BTC and bought 6,210 BTC, 4,144 of which were acquired with funds from a $300 million convertible notes offering at an average price of $59,500 per coin.
• Singapore-based Genius Group (GNS) shifts to Bitcoin treasury strategy. The AI company said it will commit 90% of its current and future reserves to bitcoin, starting with an initial $120 million purchase.
• U.S. House votes down anti-NGO bill that could revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits. On Tuesday, members of the U.S. House of Representatives did not secure the two-thirds majority needed to advance bill HR 9495. This legislation would have given the U.S. Treasury Secretary extensive authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations if the Secretary deems them to be "terrorist-supporting organizations."
• Italy to water down its 42% cryptocurrency capital gains tax proposal. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government suggested amending the budget to cap the tax increase at 28%, reduced from the initially proposed 42%. The current rate is 26%, writes Bloomberg.
• ECB economists soften wording in the latest anti-bitcoin paper. The last paragraph now reads: "Current non-holders should realise that they have reasons to worry about Bitcoin and legislation favoring it" instead of "Current non-holders should realize that they have compelling reasons to oppose Bitcoin and to advocate for legislation against it, aiming to prevent bitcoin prices from rising or to see Bitcoin disappear altogether," along with a few other changes.

• CEO of Canada-based cryptocurrency holding kidnapped and released after paying $1M (CAD) ransom. Dean Skurka, CEO of WonderFi, a publicly traded crypto holding company owning one of Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, was abducted during rush hour in Toronto and released unharmed after paying a ransom of 1 million Canadian dollars (approximately $720,660), according to CBC.
• Ukrainian national robbed of 500,000 USDT in Thailand. According to Bangkok Post, a 23-year-old man was attacked by two men and forced to transfer half a million USDT.
• Block introduced Proto - it's suite of bitcoin mining products and services, including ASICs, hardware solutions, and developer tools.

"Proto aims to contribute to the health of the bitcoin network by decentralizing both the supply of mining hardware — both chips and rigs — and the distribution of hashrate. Our goal is to bring better product experiences to the mining industry. By introducing a new, competitive chip (ASIC), we will provide an alternative to the current market offerings, which are often plagued by unreliable performance, lack of customization, and poor customer support," the company said in a blog post.

• Bitkey partners with Blockchain.com and Azteco. Bitkey customers will now be able to buy and sell bitcoin through Blockchain.com and will have access to redeem Azteco bitcoin vouchers via Bitkey app, was announced in a blog post.
• Galaxy Digital is pivoting from Bitcoin mining to AI. In its Q3 update, the company announced that it has signed a non-binding agreement with an unnamed U.S. hyperscaler firm to potentially convert its entire 800 MW power capacity to high-performance computing (HPC). Additionally, the company plans to terminate its colocation contract for 2.3 EH/s with Argo Blockchain.
• Joltz and Eulen to launch the first stablecoin on the Lightning Network using Taproot Assets. DePix will be Brazil's first Taproot-based stablecoin, bridging the Lightning Network with the country's PIX payment system.

• Breez partners with Mexican Bitcoin neobank Yopaki. Yopaki offers the ability to buy and sell bitcoin and other financial instruments. The app users also get access to automated channel management, resources to learn about Bitcoin (powered by Jippi), and the ability to earn sats by playing the Mexican game, Lotería.
• Bitso exchange added Lightning support. The leading cryptocurrency exchange in Latin America has completed its integration with the Lightning Network, and this feature is now available to all users. The rollout was implemented in partnership with Lightspark.
• Tether unveils Tether Wallet Development Kit (WDK). According to the company, it is "an open-source, self-custodial toolkit for developers to create Bitcoin and USD₮ wallets for humans, AI and robots." Check it out here.
• Revolut to roll out its cryptocurrency exchange across Europe. The London-based digital bank is expanding its Revolut X platform across 30 European countries, as announced on Wednesday. Launched in the UK in May for professional traders, the app will enable bitcoin and altcoin trading to users in 30 European countries. Revolut has over 40 million customers globally.
• Mullvad VPN cancels remaining PayPal subscriptions to collect less user data. "This does not affect the time remaining on your account, it will just not be renewed automatically. We removed subscriptions in order to store less data about our customers," said the company.
• Mutiny team is developing OpenSecret. OpenSecret is a backend solution for app developers that turns private encryption on by default to safeguard sensitive data. By ensuring that only users can access their data, OpenSecret aims to enhance security for both users and developers. The official launch is scheduled for 2025.

"Our socials have switched over to OpenSecret. When the wallet officially shuts down at the end of the year, won't be using Mutiny anywhere anymore," said Tony Giorgio on stacker.news.

• Interested users can join the waitlist to get early access.

• The company also introduced Maple AI, a private AI chat built with OpenSecret. A private beta is available here.

• Plan ₿ Forum to take place in San Salvador on January 30-31, 2025. The two-day event at the Sheraton Presidente Hotel and the Museum of Art of El Salvador will feature keynotes, panels, workshops, an art gallery, and an exhibition floor for startups and sponsors. Early bird tickets are still available here.

Updates and releases

• RoboSats v0.7.2-alpha lets users test Nostr global order books by enabling the option in the configuration tab. Currently, the feature is only available on the web, but it will be brought to the mobile app in upcoming releases. This version also improves robot recovery forms, changes "fast generate robot" to "fast generate order," adds coordinator Alias to the invoice description, and includes many smaller bug fixes.
• ZEUS v0.9.2 features the ability to export transaction history, enhanced support for BIP-353 and BOLT 12, and improvements for hardware wallets and external signers.
• Zeus White is white glove node management, point of sale, and integrated enterprise solutions for businesses.
• Liana wallet v8.0 introduces support for Taproot descriptors on BitBox02 devices and includes a new installation process with setup templates and examples. Additionally, the wallet's syncing state display has been reworked.
• Krux v24.11.0, an open-source firmware for building DIY Bitcoin signing devices, adds an experimental tamper detection tool, a Flash Map tool for visualizing the regions of device memory, fixes a vulnerability related to the import of Python modules from an SD card, adds a WonderWM simulator, provides a Japanese translation, and includes a few other reliability and quality-of-life improvements.
• Bitcoin Keeper v1.2.18 enables the selection of Electrum servers during app setup instead of using a default one. It also adds support for TwentyTwo's Portal signing device and enables the USB option for Coldcard and Jade signers via the desktop app. The update also makes it easier to manage transactions, including a redesigned send experience and enhanced UTXO management with detailed transaction views.
  • Keeper Desktop v0.1.3 now supports Trezor Safe 5 and Ledger Stax and Flex hardware signers.
• Nunchuk Android v1.9.54, iOS v1.9.58, and Desktop v1.9.40 now support COLDCARD as an inheritance key, add the option to 'send all remaining' for batch transactions, along with various fixes and improvements.
• Aqua wallet v0.2.5 introduces many UI improvements and a new logo. Among new features are watch-only wallet support for Bitcoin and Liquid, and many bug fixes to improve and stabilize Lightning sends.
• Blockstream Green iOS v4.0.37 has added Jade upsells, updates GDK to v0.73.3, improves QR code scan visual feedback, and resolves several bugs.
• Clams Remote v2.4.0, a web interface for controlling one's Core Lightning node, added UI for BOLT12 Prism plugin, fixes BOLT12 validation issues, enhanced 'create offer' flow, and more.
• Boltz launched Rootstock <> Lightning swaps. "Starting today, users can move their Satoshis from Lightning to Rootstock using our Web App at boltz.exchange and start exploring the Rootstock ecosystem," the project announced in a blog post.
  • Rootstock Swaps utilize HTLC-based atomic swap principles similar to other swaps on Boltz. The swap contract code is available here and is verified on Rootstock. You can view the current version of the RBTC swap contract for reference.
• StashPay wallet, a Bitcoin wallet for freelancers and digital nomads, launched its beta for Android.
• Blitz Wallet added Money Badger's Pick n Pay integration.

• Ginger Wallet v2.0.14, a fork of the original Wasabi wallet with hardcoded coordinator and round input filtering, added a resync button, manual coin control enhancements, and new languages: French and Simplified Chinese.
• Ride The Lightning v0.15.3-beta a minor release with bug fixes and support for sending payments to AMP invoices on LND.
• LND Client is a Golang native wrapper for lnd's gRPC interface.
• Geyser.fund now supports the use of Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) wallets on Geyser projects.
• BitKit v1.0.6 has been released with improved balance accuracy and clearer transaction notifications.
• BlindBit Wallet is a work-in-progress BIP-352 silent payment wallet that runs as a daemon. It is written in Go and supports receive and send functionality. "Still in early testing, only use with funds you can afford to lose," warns the developer.
• Bit By Bit mempool app is now available on iOS TestFlight.
• Fully Noded - Server v0.0.0.5 is now available for testing.
• Alby Hub introduced subaccounts to allow Hub runners to share liquidity with friends and family using a simple NWC connection.
  • Alby team is also working on Alby Lite - an experimental, open-source LNURL server powered by NWC.
• tick-tock-tui is a TUI app for handling Bitcoin data provided by Mempool REST API incl. blocks, fees and price converter.
• GDK v0.73.4 pre-release has been tagged.
• Bitkey app v2024.72.1 implemented UTXO consolidation feature.
• Fountain app v1.1.6 is now live on iOS and Android. It includes many bug fixes, new audio APIs, performance upgrades, and nested navigation.

• Cypher.space v0.99 beta, a self-hosted Wordpress and Shopify alternative for setting up a free bitcoin blog or webshop with value-for-value donation and checkout procedure tools, has implemented support for classified listings (NIP-99) and now allows creating and editing of listings and blog posts via the dashboard.
• Corny Chat v2024.10, an open-source audio space built on Jam that integrates Nostr and Lightning, adds the ability to edit user profiles, including kind 0 metadata, avatars, and banner images, and delivers a number of other bug fixes and improvements.
• Lume v24.11.8, a Nostr client for macOS and Windows 11, now uses NIP-22 for comments, adds Sync All via Negentropy to Settings, and improves notification messages and text visibility in Settings.
• Grain v0.2.0, an open-source Nostr relay implementation written in Go, brings a complete revamp of config management, backup relay integration, better blacklisting capabilities, timestamp-based event rejection, and bug fixes.
• Zapstore v0.1.5 is a migration release as the project moved to zapstore.dev domain.
• Swap Market showcased a proof-of-concept of the 'Exchange in a Browser' idea, where users trade against open-source code hosted on GitHub Pages.
• Stacker.news added improvements to attached wallet logs, added Tor support for receiving with LNbits, and implemented many bug fixes.
• Nostraut is an app for automating one's activity on the Nostr protocol. Currently, it supports note scheduling, but future updates will include event notifications and automated reactions to events.

"Feedback and feature requests are greatly appreciated," said the developer.

• Latest YakiHonne mobile app update includes the ability to update the home feed with personal interests, the ability to quote articles, videos, and curations inside notes, the option to enable or disable profile previews and the home suggestion box, and more
  • The YakiHonne web app introduces a fresh design overhaul for the article, video, and curation pages, connected threads for following discussions, home feed personalization, reply preview, saving of notes and replies, and more.
• NIP-05 names on Mostr Bridge now have a separate subdomain for each ActivityPub user, announced Alex Gleason.

"The new Proof of Concept supports sha1 git repos, so you can push your pet project to a nostr relay and a blossom server," said the developer.

• Knox (beta) is a Nostr CLI tool that acts as a secure bunker for sharing credentials. It supports encrypted storage and can run independently across multiple devices.
• Zap.store is now just Zapstore. "The premium domain renewal is too expensive, so I'm moving it to zapstore.dev for years to come. The middle dot is also confusing for pronunciation," said the developer.
• Cashu.me web wallet now can display the USD price when paying a Lightning invoice from a BTC mint (must be turned on in the settings), and its QR scanner now supports BIP-21 unified addresses.
• PPQ.ai added text-to-video models, allowing you to generate AI videos with sats.

• ShopinBit, the biggest European online bitcoin marketplace, has been launched in Switzerland.
• Foundation launched a community forum in a move away from Telegram. It is built with an open-source Discourse forum software.
• Sandwich is an Electrum plugin for creating basic OP_CTV transactions.
• Swiss Bitcoin Pay app added native BitBox02 support. This lets merchants receive bitcoin payments directly to their hardware wallet.

Here is the whole process in our signup form, with a brand-new BitBox02: pic.twitter.com/TpHo7hWf7U

— 🇨🇭 Swiss Bitcoin Pay (@SwissBitcoinPay) November 13, 2024

• Thunder Funder, a platform for funding Bitcoin and related open-source startups, listed Joltz as its first project. The seed round is taking place here.
• LocalSend is a free and open-source, cross-platform tool for sharing files over the local WiFi network with secure end-to-end encryption.
• Git-remote-nostr is a tool for pushing git repositories onto Nostr relays with Blossom servers. It produces kind 30618 events on the relay specified in NIP-34.
• Signal added Zoom-like video calls for groups. Users can now join a Signal group call by simply sharing a link. The update also adds a raise hand button, emoji reactions, a dedicated calls tab, more options to view call speakers and participants, as well as updated call settings

"All of these features are available in the latest versions of Signal for Android, iOS, and Desktop. Update Signal to try them out," said the project.

• Tor Browser v14.0.2 fixes a tor crash bug on macOS when attempting to visit onion sites with PoW protections enabled.
• CalyxOS v6.1.0 is a November security update for Pixel 6 to 8a devices. Pixel 9 builds will be released later this week.

Guides and research

• Xavier Fiechter wrote a blog post on extending BIP-21 labels with BIP-329 for improved address management.
• Breno Brito introduced the concept of Granola - a Cashu-based exchange.
• BTCPay Server published a detailed tutorial showing how to accept Bitcoin payments in WIX stores.

• Atlas21 published a simple guide on how to securely store a seed phrase.
  
• Charlie Spears published a post with key takeways from the OP_NEXT Bitcoin Scaling Conference.
• Julian Figueroa shared a new short film called "What Is Bitcoiner?" Watch it and zap it here.
• 21st Capital shared a walkthrough for configuring a multisig setup with the Smart Vault app, allowing for customizable recovery layers.

Mining stats

• Bitcoin mining difficulty is set to adjust in ~9 hours. Currently, the network's average hashrate (7-day SMA) is at ~723 EH/s.

Lightning stats

Nostr stats

• Nearly 4000 new users joined the Nostr protocol last week, per primal.net stats.

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