Block 877778: Important News of the Week

News

• IRS delays bitcoin cost-basis reporting rules until 2026. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced that it has delayed new bitcoin tax reporting rules until early 2026. This extension provides brokers with additional time to adjust to the cost basis regulations for centralized platforms.
• Industry groups are suing the IRS over the new KYC "Broker Rules" for "DeFi front-end services." The Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund, and Texas Blockchain Council aim to block the latest midnight rulemaking that requires "DeFi entities offering front-end services" to track and report customer information.

"The IRS and Treasury have gone beyond their statutory authority in expanding the definition of “broker” to include providers of DeFi trading front-ends even though they do not effectuate transactions. Not only is this an infringement on the privacy rights of individuals using decentralized technology, it would push this entire, burgeoning technology offshore," said Marisa Coppel, Head of Legal, Blockchain Association.

• The EU kicks off 2025 with a remarkable shitshow of financial surveillance masquerading as security. Starting January 1, 2025, the EU's FATF Travel Rule requires Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to verify self-custodial wallets for transactions over €1,000. VASPs must also collect, store, and share beneficiary information, while the effectiveness of the Travel Rule in combating money laundering remains unclear. What is clear, though, is that the Travel Rule raises major safety concerns for bitcoin and other crypto asset users. From now on, highly sensitive user information is being shared not only with the customer's financial institution but also with all institutions they transact with, increasing the risk of hacks and identity theft, reports The Rage.
• The UN General Assembly has greenlit a cybercrime treaty despite widespread backlash. The UN General Assembly approved its cybercrime convention that may change how governments regulate the internet. Human rights activists, cybersecurity experts, and major tech companies have voiced their opposition, cautioning that the convention may be misused by authoritarian regimes and lead to numerous privacy violations.
  • Attempts to include human rights protections in the treaty failed during negotiations over the summer. The Cybercrime Convention will be signed in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2025, taking effect 90 days after the 40th ratification.
• Enforcement of US Corporate Transparency Act blocked again following a court reversal. A Fifth Circuit panel reinstated a nationwide injunction against the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) just three days after another panel lifted it, causing additional confusion regarding compliance with the controversial law.

"In light of a recent federal court order, reporting companies are not currently required to file beneficial ownership information with FinCEN and are not subject to liability if they fail to do so while the order remains in force. However, reporting companies may continue to voluntarily submit beneficial ownership information reports," reads a statement on FinCEN's website.

• Swiss proposal to include Bitcoin in national reserves. A recent proposal by local Bitcoin advocates aims to modify Article 99 of the Swiss Constitution, requiring the central bank to allocate part of its reserves to bitcoin in addition to gold. The initiative has 18 months to gather 100,000 signatures needed for a public referendum.
• Hong Kong lawmaker advocates for strategic Bitcoin reserve. Lawmaker Wu Jie is advocating for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to consider adding bitcoin to its fiscal reserves. He suggests using foreign exchange funds to acquire and hold digital assets long-term.
• MicroStrategy has acquired 2,138 BTC for ~$209 million at ~$97,837 per coin. The company now owns 446,400 BTC acquired for approximately $27.9 billion at about $62,428 per bitcoin.
• Tether added 7,629 BTC to its reserves. Tether recently transferred 7,629 BTC (worth approximately $700 million) to its bitcoin reserve address on Monday, as reported by The Block.
• Genius Group now holds 319.4 BTC. The Nasdaq-listed AI-based education company announced an additional purchase of $10 million worth of bitcoin. CEO Roger Hamilton stated that their initial target is to accumulate 1,000 coins.

• FOLD announces $30M convertible note financing. The Bitcoin financial services company secured a $20 million convertible note financing from ATW Partners, with an optional $10 million available upon closing its business combination with FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp. The funds will accelerate its Bitcoin offerings and treasury development.
• Tangem fixes a bug exposing user private keys. Multicoin wallet provider Tangem has addressed a significant vulnerability in its mobile app that exposed users' private keys through support emails. The project estimates that the issue potentially affects less than 0.1% of its user base. Affected users are urged to update the app and move their funds out of potentially compromised wallets.

"When activating a wallet with a seed phrase—by generating or importing one—the private key was mistakenly logged in the mobile app's logs. These logs could later be accessed during interactions with our support team," the project acknowledged in a blog post.

• Do Kwon pleads not guilty to fraud following US extradition. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged Do Kwon, co-founder of Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developer of TerraUSD and Luna, with a nine-count indictment. The charges include securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
• U.S. Treasury hack on December 8th. According to a letter sent to leaders on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, "a threat actor had gained access to a key used by vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices end users." This access allowed the attacker to override the service’s security and access certain unclassified documents.
• At least 35 Chrome extensions compromised. A hacking campaign that began on December 5, 2024, has compromised at least 35 Chrome extensions, affecting approximately 2.6 million users. Cybersecurity experts advise those impacted to promptly change their passwords and tokens, clear sessions, and review logs for any suspicious activity.
  • A list of affected extensions is available here.
• Bitcoin miner HIVE Digital relocates to Texas. The firm is relocating its headquarters from Vancouver, Canada, to San Antonio, Texas, citing favorable Bitcoin mining regulations and better access to U.S. capital markets, according to The Miner Mag.
• Casa to discontinue support for iOS 15 on February 1, 2025. "For Casa clients currently using iOS 15, we recommend you either upgrade to a newer version or, in some cases, upgrade to a newer device," said the company.

• Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference is set scheduled for August 28-29 in Hong Kong. Tickets and other related information are available here.

Updates and releases

• Bull Bitcoin Wallet v0.4.0 introduces send and receive functionality for serverless asynchronous Payjoin V2 (BIP-77) transactions. The implementation is backward compatible with Payjoin v1 implementations in apps like BlueWallet, Sparrow, BTCPay Server, and others.
• Stratum v2 Reference Implementation v1.2.0 release continues to "solidify low-level protocols, enhances the developer experience by adding a new integration test framework, and lays the foundation for big plans in 2025," said the developers.
• Boltz Pro provides a non-custodial way to earn sats by making swaps in a specific direction based on the current liquidity status of Boltz wallets. You can try it here.
• Blockstream Satellite CLI v2.5.0 modifies the Telstar 11N signal frequencies for Africa and Europe, and introduces a new graphical user interface application named blocksat-gui for simpler receiver setup and Satellite API usage.
• OpenTimestamps client v0.7.2, a command-line tool for creating and validating timestamp proofs using the OpenTimestamps protocol, now works in git worktrees.
• BP2 Central, an aggregator of bitcoin peer-to-peer buy and sell offers, now displays orders from Bisq.
• Next Block fee estimator is now available at nextblock.cypherpunktools.com. An onion version of the site is available here.
• Electrs v0.10.8, an efficient re-implementation of Electrum Server in Rust, is now available.
• Zeus v0.9.4 release includes improvements and new features such as an enhanced transaction user experience, display of keysend messages, CLNRest enhancements, and various optimizations.
• Alby Go v1.8.1 has been released, featuring fixes and dependency updates.
• Bitcoin Keeper v1.3.2 brings a simplified collaborative wallet setup, supports alphanumeric PINs for the Portal signing device, and provides new technical support for concierge users, along with some UI updates and bug fixes.
  • The Keeper Desktop application has been updated to version v0.1.5.
• Nigiri v0.5.6, a "docker box for special Bitcoin cooking," has been released.

• ESP-miner v2.4.3b1 firmware is now available for testing.
• Bitcoin Safe v1.0.0rc2 is now available for testing. It comes with full support for all major hardware signers, including COLDCARD devices, Bitbox02, Blockstream Jade, Trezor, Foundation Passport, Keystone, Ledger, and Specter DIY.
• An experimental Rust implementation of Joinstr, developed by pythcoiner, is now available here. The development of this project is sponsored by Bull Bitcoin.

• rust-nostr v0.38.0 update includes full NIP-42 support for the SDK and relay builder, along with negentropy support and read/write policy plugins for the relay builder. It also features NIP-35 support, improved logging and documentation, performance enhancements, bug fixes, and more.
• Dart / Flutter NDK v0.2.2 implements NIP-47 for Nostr Wallet Connect, along with support for NIP-44, NIP-57 zaps, NIP-42 Authentication of clients to relays, and NIP-44 Encrypted Payloads, among other features.
• Leito shared a demo of Paid-blossom (Ratasker), a tool for charging for the upload and download of files using Blossom and Cashu.

"This will give incentives to people to save information and easily charge for it when people want it. This of torrents and the Internet Archive combined. File distribution with solid economic incentives," said the developer.

• 0xChat app v1.4.5 and Desktop v1.0.1 now support NIP-46 login, adapt the user interface for tablet devices, introduce connection ping status, implement default reaction emojis, and other enhancements.
• NostrDVM v1.0.9, a framework for easily building and/or running Nostr NIP90 DVMs in Python, has been released. It introduces the DVMFramework class for handling the deletion of NIP-89 announcements on shutdown by default.
• Olas v0.1.7.1 now works with remote signers, such as Amber (in nsecbunker mode), and brings further performance improvements along with multiple bug fixes.
• The latest Yakihonne client updates include multilanguage support, starting with English and Chinese, adds support for translating notes and articles into the app's main language, and multiple bug fixes and improvements.
• Kanbanstr is a kanban board implementation built on the Nostr protocol.

• Corny Chat v2024.12 initial scaffolding for a subscription/membership system. Besides, user profiles now support rendering image URLs in the about section.
• OpenLibrarian v0.1.6 extends testing for alternative APIs, including timeouts and progress event test cases, as well as adding "Currently Reading" progress tracking.
• GitCitadel, a project focused on Nostr Alexandria e-reader and publisher for NIP-62 Curated Publications, announced a milestone of printing "the entire Bible" using notes 30040/30041. These have been made available for users to peruse using a pre-release of its Nostr client. Learn more about it here.
• Noflux is a lightweight RSS and Nostr long-form reader for desktop and personal servers.

• Noshtastic is a geo-specific virtual Nostr relay for Meshtastic. It is designed to operate as a standalone Nostr network, functioning independently of internet-based Nostr relays.
• GrapheneOS v2024123000 introduces support for adding a PIN as a second factor for fingerprint unlock. This allows users to enable a high-threat model configuration, utilizing a random diceware passphrase as the primary unlock method, and combining fingerprint with a random 4-6 digit PIN for the regularly used secondary unlock method.

Guides and research

• Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #335 links to information about longstanding deanonymization vulnerabilities in software using centralized coinjoin protocols and summarizes an update to a draft BIP about the ChillDKG distributed key generation protocol.
• In its 2024 year in review, OpenSats reported receiving $23.6 million in funding throughout the year.

• The Bitcoin Policy Institute UK has released its 2024 year-end roundup.
• Satsie's Pocket Guide to Payjoin offers an overview of Payjoin for beginners.
• Bitvocation has released a 'permissionless career guide' for individuals looking to work on Bitcoin and freedom tech in 2025.
• Utkarsh Phirke shared a quick explainer of RGB transactions, detailing how RGB utilizes Bitcoin UTXOs and explaining why transactions remain off-chain.
• Fudmottin shared a guide on how to run a Bitcoin full node with a Stratum server using a Raspberry Pi 5.

Mining stats

• Bitcoin mining difficulty has reached 109.78T.
• The network's hashrate (7-day SMA) is currently at ~794 EH/s.

Lightning stats

• The capacity of the Lightning Network changed by -0.63% last week.

Nostr stats

• The Nostr protocol has reached 1.9 million users, according to primal.net stats.

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