By EZ in Weekly Digest — Feb 2, 2025

Block 882000: Important News of the Week

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

Shoutout to the supporters of No Bullshit Bitcoin, who donated 1,327,844 sats (approximately $1,319) this week, allowing us to surpass our fundraising goal of 1 million sats for January 2025.

In total, we've raised nearly 1.85 million sats during the month (~$1,837). Thank you so much for your zaps and support—it literally keeps us going!
We're raising 1 million sats for February 2025 as well, so if you enjoy our coverage and want to see No Bullshit Bitcoin news grow, consider making a donation.

News

The first-ever Bitcoin telehash fundraiser has successfully found a block. Block 881,423, mined by the 256 Foundation during the Telehash event, marks the first time a fundraiser has been conducted through Bitcoin hashrate. It raised 3.146 BTC in rewards to advance free and open-source Bitcoin mining software, firmware, and hardware solutions.

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Source: ODELL.

The 256 Foundation also partnered with Block's mining team, Proto. The team has donated "up to 256K BZM2 ASIC chips to the foundation," allowing them to allocate these resources to emerging mining projects at their discretion.
OpenSats issues its ninth wave of Bitcoin grants. The latest grantees are the Kibo, El Tor, Nutstash, and rust-bitcoin projects.
Spiral renews grant to Fedimint developer Justin Moeller. "Sometimes, there's a dev, well, he's the dev for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's Justin Moeller (@m1sterc001guy), whose GitHub places him high in the runnin' for most prolific Fedimint dev on earth. But sometimes there's a dev; sometimes, there's a dev," announced the organization.
Disclosure: replacement cycling attacks on bitcoin miners block templates. Antoine Riard reported a variant of replacement cycling attacks that allows an attacker to censor transaction traffic from miners' block templates. This method enables the attacker to gain a dominant strategy in the distribution of Bitcoin fee rewards for block generation within the longest valid chain, effectively undermining the efforts of honest mining nodes.

"While the practicality of replacement cycling attacks in the real-world is still an open question among the bitcoin protocol experts, in my personal and humble opinion this variant of replacement cycling attack is severe for the perennity of the bitcoin ecosystem at large, even more in a post-subsidy world," said the developer.

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev to be released under house arrest, pending appeal. Pertsev was sentenced to 64 months in the Netherlands for writing open-source privacy code on Ethereum last year. His defense has filed an appeal and is currently preparing his case. According to his wife, he will be released under house arrest with an electronic bracelet in the next two weeks.

EFF joins the defense of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the largest digital civil liberties organization globally, has filed an amicus brief in support of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm's motion to reconsider the case dismissal, reports The Rage.

"The Government's arguments are "akin to claiming that Visa or MasterCard would be criminally liable based solely on receiving transaction fees whenever its customers transferred money as part of some underlying criminal activity," or "akin to the government claiming that it could prosecute FedEx for illegal drugs sent through FedEx from a corner store because FedEx set up and 'supports' a process for local pack and ship corner stores to let their customers ship via FedEx, with payment remitted to FedEx," said the organization.

El Salvador passes a bill to revise its Bitcoin adoption strategy. The country’s Legislative Assembly has approved legislation to reduce the country’s Bitcoin adoption strategy to satisfy the terms of a $1.4 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The bill makes the private sector’s acceptance of bitcoin voluntary rather than mandatory.
US Senate approves Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary. On Monday, the Senate voted 68-29 in favor of Bessent's nomination, and he will officially become a member of Trump's cabinet once he is sworn in to succeed Janet Yellen. A key focus of Trump's agenda is the continuation of tax cuts.
Czech National Bank (CNB) approves proposal to further explore investing in bitcoin. The Bank Board will decide on further steps based on the analysis results. Any changes to reserve portfolios will be disclosed in the CNB's quarterly international reserves information and annual report, was stated in a press release.
France moves forward to classify bitcoin and digital assets as 'unproductive assets.' French Senator Sylvie Vermeillet recently proposed a bill to classify bitcoin and other digital assets as "unproductive," suggesting they should be taxed similarly to luxury items and vacant properties. Under this proposal, which is aimed at the 2025 budget, holders who hold more than €800,000 worth of 'unproductive assets', would incur an annual tax on their total value.
Bitcoin strategic reserve efforts in the US derailed by Ripple. The company has reportedly achieved 'significant success' with its pro-altcoin lobbying, leading efforts to remove the term "bitcoin" from all executive orders and actions signed by Donald Trump and halted two initiatives aimed at creating a national Bitcoin reserve.
Poland becomes the fifth largest Bitcoin ATM country. Recently, Poland expanded its Bitcoin ATM network by adding 10 new machines, bringing the total to 219 and surpassing El Salvador to become the fifth-largest ATM network globally, following the US, Canada, Australia, and Spain, per CoinATMRadar data.
Bitcoin Strategic Reserve updates in the states:
- South Dakota Representative Logan Manhart introduced two new legislative proposals to incorporate Bitcoin (BTC) into the state’s investment strategy. HB 1202 would allow the state to allocate 10% of its public funds to bitcoin, while HCR 6006 urges the State Investment Council to explore bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.
- Missouri Senator Travis Fitzwater introduced SB614, which would permit the State Treasurer to allocate up to 10% of public funds to bitcoin, and includes provisions to protect the rights to self-custody and mining.
- Illinois State Representative John M. Cabello introduced HB1844, a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act" aimed at establishing a 'Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Fund' in the State Treasury.
- Indiana State Representative Jake Teshka has brought forward HB1322, which would pave way for state-managed investments in bitcoin.
- Arizona's Senate Finance Committee has approved SB1025, which now advances to the Senate Rules Committee before a full Senate vote.
- Utah: The House Economic Development Committee has approved HB 230, advancing it to the House.
MicroStrategy buys another 10,107 BTC. The coins were purchased for approximately $1.1 billion, bringing the company's total holdings to 471,107 BTC.
Kurl Technology Group buys $8M worth of bitcoin. The recent acquisition was completed at an average price of $101,695 per bitcoin, increasing the company's total reserves to 510 coins.
The European Squash Federation embraces Bitcoin, becoming the first major sports federation in Europe to integrate BTC into its operations. The organization will hold bitcoin as an asset on its balance sheet, accept bitcoin donations using BTCPay Server and Blink, and "will facilitate the use of Bitcoin for both incoming payments and outgoing transactions, wherever it is deemed appropriate." The move was executed with the assistance of the Norwegian Bitcoin consultancy firm SatoshiConsult.

"By adopting Bitcoin, we are not only modernizing our financial approach but also offering new opportunities for engagement and support within the squash community. We believe this will open doors for innovation and growth," said Otto Kalvø, Vice-President of the European Squash Federation.

Nasdaq files for in-kind redemptions for BlackRock's iShares spot bitcoin ETF. Nasdaq has submitted a proposal for a rule change to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), seeking permission for the in-kind creation and redemption of shares for the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). Initially, when the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs, including IBIT, last January, it allowed these funds to be launched with cash redemption rather than with bitcoin.
The Cboe BZX Exchange has proposed in-kind creations and redemptions for the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, filed with the US SEC on January 27th. If approved, it would allow Authorized Participants to engage in in-kind transactions.
Tether and Lightning Labs team up to bring USDT to Lightning Network. The integration will utilize Taproot Assets, a protocol that enables interoperability between stablecoins and a range of other assets issued on Bitcoin and moved via the Lightning rails.
Tether reports $13 billion in net profits for 2024. According to a Q4 and year-end attestation published on Friday, the stablecoin issuer generated $13 billion in net profits for 2024, including $6 billion in Q4 alone. Tether also saw its direct and indirect exposure to US Treasuries reach a record high of $113 billion, and its excess reserves soared past $7 billion, marking a 36% year-over-year increase. The firm also increased its bitcoin holdings to nearly 84,000 BTC valued at ~$7.8 billion at the end of 2024.
UTXO Management, Sora Ventures and others, acquired HK Asia Holdings Limited. The public company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) now plans to rebrand as Moon Inc. and signals its intention to explore cryptocurrency investments and 'Web 3.0 innovation,' reports Bitcoin Magazine.
Arkansas state Senate rejects mining ban near military facilities. The state's governors have voted against a proposal to restrict Bitcoin mining operations within a 30 mile radius of military facilities, including hospitals and military clinics, reports Atlas21.
Russia's largest grid operator, Rosseti, to utilize underused energy for Bitcoin mining. The state-owned company's strategy involves optimizing existing energy facilities that currently operate below their maximum capacity. Rosseti has confirmed that it already has the necessary technical infrastructure in place to effectively manage the loads of mining facilities.
Stolen IDs spark $1.9m losses in Malaysia. Forty-five homeowners and business operators in Malaysia have been confronted with power bills amounting to $1.9 million after some tenants illegally mined bitcoin using stolen identities of these property owners, reports The Miner Mag.
Grayscale launches an ETF tracking public Bitcoin miners. The fund offers investors exposure to the broader Bitcoin mining sector, with holdings in 23 companies involved in proprietary Bitcoin mining or hosting businesses, as well as chip giants Intel and Nvidia.
Digital Currency Group (DCG) has formed Fortitude Mining. This new entity comes from spinning off the proprietary Bitcoin mining division of its subsidiary, Foundry, confirming earlier reports by Blockspace.Media.

Reminder: Check EVERY address character before sending any transaction.

Trump's executive order sideswipes freedom tools - EFF. The executive order, called Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid, has led the State Department to immediately suspend contracts with hundreds of organizations supported through its programs, including those from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. This impacts many freedom technologies that use cryptography to fight censorship and protect freedom of speech, privacy, and anonymity. While limited waivers have been issued, they do not appear to cover open source internet freedom technologies, reports the EFF.
DARPA to launch pre-crime AML program. DARPA has unveiled plans for a pre-crime Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program designed to prevent money laundering before it occurs, and is likely to be applied to digital assets. This initiative employs contentious predictive policing methods, which have been criticized for potentially exacerbating arbitrary discrimination.

"If successful, A3ML would make it prohibitively expensive for our adversaries to transfer illicit value through the global financial system. the technical hypothesis: illicit finance tactics, techniques, and procedures can be algorithmically extracted from diverse data sources and represented in a generic, sharable form," said 3ML program manager David Dewhurst.

Phemex exchange losses climb to $85 million following a recent hack. The Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange experienced a breach of its hot wallets on January 23rd. The initial estimate of stolen cryptocurrency was $29 million, but the figure was raised to $73 million on Friday. By Sunday, the estimates rose once more, with MetaMask's Taylor Monahan calculating the value of the stolen assets to be at least $85 million. The attack constitutes the largest centralized exchange hack of 2025 so far.
NoOnes CEO Ray Youssef discloses $8 million exploit that occurred on January 2nd. Regulated peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platform NoOnes experienced a security breach earlier this month, resulting in the loss of around $8 million in assets, as stated by CEO Ray Youssef in a recent post.
THORChain halts withdrawals amid $200M insolvency. The interblockchain settlements protocol has paused bitcoin and ether withdrawals from its lending and savers programs for 90 days to mitigate a potential insolvency risk. The protocol currently holds around $200 million in BTC and ETH liabilities that it cannot cover without risking a significant drop in the value of its native shitcoin, RUNE. THORChain's primary service, cross-chain swaps, is reportedly unaffected.
KuCoin to pay over $297 million fine and exit the US market. The exchange has pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and will pay over $297 million in penalties. As part of the plea, KuCoin will exit the US market for at least two years, and founders Chun Gan and Ke Tang will depart the company.
X has partnered with Visa to launch 'X Money'. Visa has been announced as the first partner for the "X Money Account" service, which is slated to launch later this year. According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, this service will include an in-platform digital wallet and support for peer-to-peer payments connected to users' debit cards and bank accounts.

Windows BitLocker vulnerability exploited in randomization attack. Identified as CVE-2025-21210, a critical vulnerability in Windows BitLocker exposes the AES-XTS encryption mode to a new randomization attack, enabling attackers with physical access to alter ciphertext blocks and cause sensitive data to be stored in plaintext, highlighting the increasing sophistication of attacks on full-disk encryption systems.
US Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) remains blocked despite the Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court overturned a lower court order that had been blocking the enforcement of the CTA, which requires millions of companies to disclose the personally identifiable information of their owners. However, a separate national injunction issued earlier this month by a federal judge remains in place and continues to block the law’s implementation. Therefore, for now, registration with FinCEN remains voluntary.
Budapest Bitcoin conference to take place on August 8-9, 2025. For more information, check out the event's website.

Updates and releases

Lightning Dev Kit (LDK) v0.1.1 patches a duplicate HTLC force closing griefing vulnerability that causes all of the victim’s channels to be force closed. Users should update to LDK v0.1.1 to protect their channels.
- Disclosure: Invalid Claims Liquidity Griefing in LDK v0.0.125 & earlier. Bitcoin developer and security researcher Matt Morehouse has put together a disclosure for an Invalid Claims Liquidity Griefing vulnerability present in Lightning Dev Kit (LDK) versions 0.0125 and earlier. Affected users can release their locked funds by upgrading to LDK v0.1 and replaying the series of commitment and HTLC transactions that resulted in the lock-up.
BlueWallet v7.0.8 fixes a typo in payment codes, resolves an error with importing wallets from the same seed in different accounts, and includes other minor updates.
- BlueWallet v7.0.9 has been released with several bug fixes and improvements.
Bitcoin Safe v1.0.4 is now available. This version fixes connection issues in Sync & Chat, adds Tor support through a proxy, improves Dark Mode, and adds a context menu option for setting address categories.
Clams v0.3, an accounting platform for Bitcoin and Lightning wallets, implements tag filtering, allowing users to filter transactions via custom or default tags, including the ability to filter by multiple accounts or tags at once.

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Clams v0.3 demo.

Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.19 enables creating support tickets from the application.
- Blockstream Green Android v4.1.4 enables users to contact support directly from the app, adds payment_hash to Lightning exceptions, and implements several fixes.
- Blockstream Green iOS v4.1.4 now also allows users to make support requests directly from the app.
Ark Wallet SDK is a TypeScript library for building Bitcoin wallets with support for both on-chain and off-chain transactions via Ark protocol. The SDK offers JavaScript developers a secure, portable solution for integrating Bitcoin functionality. Utilizing noble cryptography's minimal-dependency approach, the wallet library supports Bitcoin and Ark transactions in web applications and mobile wallets, all without the overhead of WebAssembly.
Zaprite launched BTCPay Server integration. "BTCPay Integration is now available. Connect your BTCPay Server to Zaprite and accept bitcoin and lightning payments, side-by-side with fiat, using your own self-hosted bitcoin infrastructure," announced the project.

Alby Extension v3.11.0 introduces a dedicated card for importing Nostr keys, adds Sinhalese, Tamil, and Russian locales, and allows users to view pending and failed transactions for Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC).
Blitz Wallet v0.3.9-beta is a maintenance release that addresses Android notification icon and push token issues, brings optimized styles, and more.
Nutshell v0.16.5, a Chaumian ecash wallet and mint for Bitcoin Lightning based on the Cashu protocol, is a maintenance release that includes various bug fixes for both the mint and the wallet.

"Most notably, overpaid Lightning fees are now issued to the user at the next restart of the mint in cases where the mint has crashed or turned off while an outgoing Lightning payment was still pending," was stated in the release notes.

Mint Marketcap by Super Testnet provides insights into the capacity of public ecash mints.
Zeus wallet v0.9.5-beta2 is now available for testing. This version enables exports of ypriv/zpriv for embedded LND node seed, adds ability to use all funds for channel opening, and brings various performance and UX improvements.
umbrelOS v1.4 beta 1 is now available for testing. It introduces a file manager for turning one's personal server into a full-fledged home cloud.

The Zcash Foundation released FROST v2.1.0. It Includes the frost-secp256k1-tr crate for Bitcoin Taproot (BIP340/BIP341) compatible signatures, enhances the distributed key generation (DKG) protocol, and supports asynchronous key generation.
Kernel-Node is an experimental Bitcoin node in Rust that validates blocks but does not serve them to the network, demonstrating the initial limited API of the libbitcoinkernel library.
Iris Wallet Desktop v0.1.0 is the first experimental release of a wallet that integrates the RGB protocol on the Lightning Network. The initial version is available for Linux and macOS, with support for testnet and regtest environments. Join the project's Telegram group here.

Joltz has launched Joltz Wallet (beta) on iOS TestFlight, with an Android release expected in about a week. It is the first self-custody wallet for Taproot Assets. Users can already test sending USDT tokens, though developers are currently using wrapped USDT on Taproot Assets, backed 1:1 by USDT issued Ethereum, until USDT is formally issued on Taproot Assets protocol by Tether.

👀A quick demo for how to receive and send on-chain Taproot Assets in the Joltz Wallet! pic.twitter.com/vy8JOlj9uI
— Joltz (@Joltz_btc) January 31, 2025

Tribe RGB v0.2.6 is a variation of the Bitcoin Tribe wallet, focused solely on issuing, sending, and receiving assets issued on the RGB protocol. It is currently available on Android and iOS for testing RGB assets on testnet/regnet. The latest update brings a revamped home screen, ability to invalidate RGB transactions, adds a registry implementation, and invoices now include Asset ID and Amount, making transaction tracking easier and more efficient.
Notedeck v0.3.0 Alpha 2 by Damus marks the first Notedeck release available to the general public. This release includes media uploads, post hashtags, profile editing, an enhanced command-line interface for user interactions, and various improvements and bug fixes.
BitVid by PR0M3TH3AN is a WebTorrent-based video client that uses Nostr to share webRTC magnets. It is meant to be a decentralized video sharing platform where content is shared directly between users. Learn more about the project here.
YakiHonne Web v4.3.0 and Mobile v1.6.4 brings wallet name customization for newly created wallets and many other quality of life improvements.
Flotilla v0.2.6, a Nostr relay-based communities app modeled after Discord, improves room and data loading, changes the reply UI, adds replies to the long-press menu, implements media server settings, and more.
Keycast, a secure remote signing and permissions management tool for teams using the Nostr protocol, has made it easier to set up an instance for one's own domain, added a new config for 'allowed pubkeys', and more.
Futr v0.2.0 by prolic is a Nostr client for Linux devices. The latest version brings a heap of new features, including comment support with threaded discussions, repost and quote post functionality, event deletion support, and much more.

Amber v3.2.0, a Nostr event signer for Android, fixes relay connection issues when starting the service, adds a profile picture feature in the incoming requests screen for large-screen devices, implements additional event kind translations, and more.
KeyChat app v1.26.5, a chat app built on Bitcoin ecash, Nostr and Singal protocol, adds browser tab, NIP-07 login support for websites, and fixes a few bugs.
Shopstr is now accessible as Tor Hidden Service.
Freeflow is a proof-of-concept for a TitTok-like app running on the Nostr protocol. Try it out here.

OpenVibe v1.7.0, a single app for Nostr, Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads, delivers larger media previews for posts, smarter replies with better thread view and sorting, as well as profile-specific notifications.
Haven relay v1.0.4 implements support for NIP-40 and replaceable events.
Rust-nostr v0.39.0 is now available. It is a Nostr SDK that helps developers build fast and secure Nostr protocol apps for desktop, web, and mobile. V0.39.0 adds NIP-96 support, NIP-22 helpers, NIP-01 adjustments, improved connection handling methods, custom WebSocket client support (Rust, Python, Kotlin, Swift), new JVM bindings, reduced UniFFI bindings binary size, and various cleanups, refactoring, and performance enhancements.
Nostr-SDK-jvm v0.39.0-alpha by Yuki Kishimoto is now available.
Pinja.in is a simple pinboard app built with Osty, a free and open-source framework for building web apps on the Nostr protocol.

Nostr.net has been updated with a new look and added a search functionality.

NerdQaxe+ v1.0.24 has been released, featuring new custom value displays on the settings page, 'PSU Error' alerts for power supply issues, a smoother hashgraph display, and more.
Stratum v2 Benchmarking Tool v0.1.1 is a patch release that fixes some recently discovered bugs and introduces significant improvements for running benchmarks on the mainnet.

Mapple AI by OpenSecret is now available, allowing you to have private conversations with a general-purpose AI assistant.
Block's Open Source Program Office has released Goose, an open-source non-commercial agentic framework that connects AI to real-world actions.
Bitcoin prediction market Predyx has introduced transaction fees to maintain the health of markets.
Bitcoin Prediction Market is a simple bitcoin-powered prediction market platform.
Coinos.io, a free and open-source Bitcoin web wallet with Lightning and ecash support, announced that an attacker was able to retrieve password reset codes for a certain number of users. About 80 accounts had their passwords reset, but only few had their funds stolen. The vulnerability has been patched, although some users might be missing recent transactions.

"We'll be reverting unsolicited withdrawals and covering all losses ourselves to make all our users whole. Thankfully we caught the attack relatively quickly and managed to take corrective action before the attacker had time to fully drain our wallets," said the project.

GrapheneOS v2025012700 fixes a regression issue introduced in the previous release and improves the Play Integrity API description.

Guides and research

Bitcoin Optech #339 newsletter describes a vulnerability affecting older versions of LDK, examines a newly disclosed aspect of a vulnerability originally published in 2023, and summarizes renewed discussion about compact block reconstruction statistics.
HRF's Financial Freedom Report #59 is now available. Check out the latest stories on how currency plays a critical role in civil liberties and human rights struggles of those living under authoritarian regimes.
Peter Todd explains that the ability to route over fake channels in the Lightning Network simplifies the implementation of Lightning on top of client-side validated tokens like RGB.
Foundation has released a blog post detailing its Quantum Link protocol.
Christoph Ono has published a new page about Human-Readable Addresses (BIP-353 and Lightning Address) in the Bitcoin.Design guide.

Link: https://github.com/lightning/bolts/pull/1110

Bitcoin Laws site is tracking the legislation of Bitcoin-related laws in the United States.
Bitcoin mining map v2 provides a map of public Bitcoin miners in the United States and Canada.
Expatriotic wrote a simple guide on how to acquire no-KYC bitcoin.
Bitvocation has released its 2024 Bitcoin Job Market data report. Get it here.

Blockstream has published its 2024 Year-in-Review report.
Coin Center has released a report on Principles for Crypto Legislation.
Award Search is a federal government grant tracking tool that helps users explore which government grants fund specific non-profits.
Derek Ross shared a simple video guide for the Damus Notedeck client.

Mining stats

Mempools cleared yesterday, signifying a reduced on-chain actvity and record low fees for on-chain transactions.
Bitcoin mining difficulty adjusted down to 108.11T (-2.12%), constituting the first difficutly drop since September.
Currently, the network's hashrate (7-day SMA) is at ~787 EH/s.