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By EZ in Weekly Digest —

Block 883093: Important News of the Week

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

Block 883093: Important News of the Week
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News

  • The Human Rights Foundation awarded all 11 Bitcoin bounties. "We are excited to announce that every single bounty was claimed and that the resulting tools and upgrades are now empowering human rights activists daily across popular apps such as BlueWallet, Zeus, Stack Wallet, Iris, Coracle, Keeper, Bull Bitcoin, Cake Wallet, and more," announced the organization. Check out the fruits of the program here.
  • Spiral renewed grants to the Bitcoin Dev Kit and Bitcoin Design foundations. The Bitcoin Dev Kit team is building tools and libraries designed to be a solid foundation for descriptor based Bitcoin wallets, with its latest bdk_wallet v1.0.0 release now available. The Bitcoin Design community provides free and open-source resources for Bitcoin designers, developers, and everyone else building non-custodial Bitcoin products.
  • The FDIC has released 175 internal documents on "Operation Chokepoint 2.0," potentially hinting at a new direction taken by the agency to allow banking institutions to operate in the Bitcoin and digital assets sector without needing prior regulatory approval. The records include correspondence between the FDIC and banks, as well as other regulated entities, regarding 'crypto' activities.
"The documents that we are releasing today show that requests from these banks were almost universally met with resistance, ranging from repeated requests for further information, to multi-month periods of silence as institutions waited for responses, to directives from supervisors to pause, suspend, or refrain from expanding all crypto or blockchain-related activity," said Travis Hill, the Acting Chairman of the agency.
  • The US Department of Justice (DOJ) argues that fiat money isn't property and can be seized at will. In a court filing, the DOJ contends that confiscating $50,000 from a small business did not infringe on the business's right to private property because money is not considered property. As reported by Reason, the DOJ provided three rationales for this argument:
    • 1) The government creates money, so you can't own it.
    • 2)The government can tax your money, so you don't own it.
    • 3) The Constitution allows the government to spend money for the 'general welfare.'"
  • Swiss banking authority FinMa overstepped its authority in implementing new KYC rules. A leaked email revealed that FinMa instructed independent regulatory bodies to impose a 1,000 CHF monthly limit on no-KYC Virtual Asset Service Providers. A lawsuit claims FinMa abused its authority by secretly attempting to regulate the Swiss cryptocurrency market, reports The Rage.
  • India to reconsider its position on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The country is reviewing its stance on cryptocurrencies due to shifting attitudes in other nations, a senior government official told Reuters. India began taxing digital assets in 2022, imposing a 1% tax-deducted-at-source (TDS) on transactions and introducing a 30% capital gains tax. Recently, tax agencies have increased penalties by up to 70% on undisclosed 'crypto' gains.
  • Russia proposed a registry to track Bitcoin mining hardware. Russia's Deputy Energy Minister, Yevgeny Grabchak, has proposed establishing a centralized registry to help authorities more effectively identify mining activities and enforce bans in restricted regions more strictly.
  • France removed wealth tax provision that classified cryptocurrencies as 'unproductive' from the 2025 budget proposal. Initially, the 2025 budget included plans to introduce a "tax on unproductive wealth," which would have included cryptocurrency holdings along with various luxury goods and real estate.
  • David Sacks, House and Senate leaders say Bitcoin Reserve, market structure bill, and stablecoin legislation are priorities. Sacks highlighted that maintaining innovation within the country is essential for the U.S. to remain a global leader in financial technology. To support this goal, he announced the formation of a joint working group between the House and Senate focused on cryptocurrency legislation. Speaking of Bitcoin, he said that it's one of the administration's priorities:
"We're in the initial phases currently. One of our priorities will be to assess the feasibility of establishing a Bitcoin Reserve," Sacks said, adding that the sovereign wealth fund recently announced by President Trump is a separate matter.
    • Senator Bill Hagerty has also introduced a stablecoin bill titled "The GENIUS Act." Senator Tim Scott aims to prioritize passing it through Congress before addressing a broader cryptocurrency market bill. The intention is to have both bills ready for the President within the administration’s first 100 days.
  • Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a US Sovereign Wealth Fund. President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the Treasury and Commerce Departments to establish a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. He assigned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick the task of developing the foundation for the fund, which will likely need congressional approval.
  • U.S. SEC announces Crypto Task Force priorities, scales back enforcement division. The task force, led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, will focus on identifying which crypto assets are securities and aims to classify some tokens as "non-securities." This could alter registration processes for firms and clarify exchange-traded product approvals. Meanwhile, the agency is downsizing by relocating some staff members, including key lawyers, to other SEC departments, reports the NY Times.
  • Pavel Durov's case in France won’t go to trial for 'a year or more.' Maylis de Roeck from the French prosecutor's office told WIRED that it is premature to talk about "any kind of settlement agreement." Over five months after his arrest, the founder of Telegram remains in France, leaving the company in uncertainty about potentially replacing its leader.
  • MicroStrategy has rebranded to Strategy. The business intelligence firm and the largest corporate holder of bitcoin will now operate under the name 'Strategy' and has changed its logo to include a Bitcoin symbol. In the announcement, Strategy stated that "the brand’s primary color is now orange, representing energy, intelligence, and Bitcoin."
  • Net inflows of US spot Bitcoin ETFs surpassed $5 billion in January. The 12 spot Bitcoin ETFs received approximately $5.25 billion in January, up from $4.53 billion in December 2024, according to The Block. BlackRock’s IBIT led with $3.23 billion, while Fidelity’s FBTC, the second-largest by net assets, recorded $1.28 billion in inflows.
  • Coinbase users lose over $300 million per year to social engineering scams. According to research by ZachXBT, scammers actively target Coinbase users using a combination of spoofed phone numbers and emails, leaked personal information, Coinbase wallet, cloned Coinbase sites, SIM swap attacks, old API keys, platform bugs, and other evolving social engineering techniques. He also documented at least $60 million stolen from Coinbase users in the last two months.
"Our number is likely much lower than the actual amount stolen as our data was limited to my DMs and thefts we discovered on-chain which does not account for Coinbase support tickets and police reports we do not have access to," said the researcher.
  • Bitdeer acquires 101 MW natural glass plant in Alberta, Canada, for $21.7M. The firm plans to energize its facilities by Q4 2026 through a partnership with an engineering and construction company. It also intends to build a 99 MW data center for Bitcoin mining on the site. Bitdeer views this as a key step toward becoming the first fully integrated Bitcoin mining firm, managing proprietary ASIC chips, data center infrastructure, and power generation capacity.
  • Semler Scientific buys additional 871 BTC. Semler Scientific bought 871 BTC for $88.5 million, averaging $101,616 per coin. The company now holds 3192 BTC at a total cost of $280.4 million.
  • Genius Group added $2 million more worth of bitcoin to its treasury. The firm now holds a total of 440 BTC acquired for $42 million, at an average price of $95,519 per bitcoin.
  • Taproot Wizards raises $30 million to advance the OP_CAT functionality. The Ordinals project raised additional funds, similar to its previous $7.5 million round, to enhance efforts in "making Bitcoin magical again," according to the project's co-founder Udi Wertheimer. The funding round was led by Standard Crypto, an early Taproot Wizards supporter, with contributions from Cyberfund, Geometry, Collider Ventures, and others.
  • Fold expands relationship with Visa. The company is expanding its collaboration with Visa to introduce innovative bitcoin rewards card programs. This includes Fold’s flagship debit card and upcoming credit card products, using Visa’s shared services and incentives to enhance rewards.
  • Blockstream opens new office in Tokyo. The company announced the opening of a new office in Tokyo to expand its global presence. It will partner with Diamond Hands and Fulgur Ventures in the region. The move aims to promote the adoption of Bitcoin Layer-2 solutions and self-custody technologies in Japan, as well as the tokenization of real-world assets.
  • Northern Nigeria Bitcoin seminar and Lightning development bootcamp will take place on May 5-9 at the Kaduna State University. It is a free 5-day event for individuals who want to level-up their Bitcoin skills and gain hands-on experience. Register here.
  • The Strategy World 2025 Bitcoin event for corporations is set to take place on May 5-8, 2025 in Orlando, Florida. Check out the event's website here.
  • Mining Disrupt 2025 conference is set to take place on March 25-27 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is said to be the world's largest Bitcoin mining conference and expo. Get your tickets here.
  • Bitcoin++ in Florianópolis, Brazil, is set to take place on February 19-22, 2025. Get your All Hack Pass here.
  • Applications for Summer of Bitcoin 2025 are now open. Summer of Bitcoin is a global online summer internship program focused on introducing university students to Bitcoin open-source development and design. Applications are open until February 15th.

Updates and releases

  • Sparrow wallet v2.1.0 is now available. This release implements Lark for USB hardware wallets, supports loading of PSBTv2 files, adds multisig wallet registration save functionality for Ledger devices, includes Jade Plus USB support, and improves restore tables sorting and sizing on wallet load, among other enhancements.
    • Sparrow Wallet v2.1.1 is a bug fix release that addresses a technical issue when scanning for USB hardware wallets on certain macOS devices. It also fixes error parsing responses from Jade DIY devices with additional firmware version information.
  • ZEUS v0.9.5 features the ability to easily export ZEUS's on-chain seed to external wallets such as Sparrow, activity list optimizations, smart automatic enabling of routing hints, and other minor improvements that pave the way for ZEUS next major release.
  • SeedSigner v0.8.5: En Español is the project's first multilingual release, now available in both English and Spanish. This version also enables basic P2TR (Pay-to-Taproot) address verification and includes a light refresh of some UX elements.
  • Envoy wallet v1.8.6 has been released. This version removes the buy button when the "Buy in Envoy" option is disabled, adds a link to Foundation's new community forum, and updates the Bitcoin ATM map to retrieve information from OpenStreetMaps, among other fixes and improvements.
  • Bitcoin Safe wallet v1.0.5 brings fixes for UI bugs, CSV Drag & Drop in lists, and newly initialized Jade devices. It adds a "restore from seed" option for Bitbox02 devices without requiring the vendor software and implements stricter tests for clean wallet shutdowns.
  • BDK wallet v1.1.0 updates the transaction builder to use transaction version 2 by default and adds support for wallets using testnet4. This release includes significant updates to bdk_electrum, which now has an MSRV of v1.75.0 to ensure alignment with the latest security fixes. Additionally, bdk_bitcoind_rpc introduces a new compact block filter module alongside various bug fixes and improvements.
  • Mempool.space now visualizes Merkle branches of Stratum jobs. The new Stratum Jobs section provides real-time visualization of Merkle branches sent by mining pools to miners, enabling users to monitor and identify similarities in mining activity across different pools.
A quick explainer by k00b.
  • Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.20 enables Liquid discounted fees for Confidential Transactions and disables transaction notes in watch-only mode.
  • Nunchuk Android v1.9.60 pre-release brings support for Android 15.
  • Electrs v0.10.9, an efficient re-implementation of Electrum Server in Rust, updates bitcoin_slices to v0.10.0, and enables concurrent DB background operations for SSDs.
  • Blitz wallet v0.4.0-beta, a bug fix release, addresses a logic issue affecting balance checks and automatic channel openings, adds a QR code wrapper component to ensure all QR codes have a uniform appearance, fixes an issue where the max send amount check failed when the balance was 0, along with some other general bug fixes.
  • Nutstash v2.0.3, a Cashu wallet with multi-mint and send-to-nostr-key functionality, has been released with several updates and improvements.
  • bullishNuts v2.0.0 makes cashuB tokens the only format for sending ecash, while users can still receive cashuA tokens into the wallet.
  • Cashu Dev Kit v0.6.1 and cdk-mint v0.6.2 are now available.
  • Bisq v1.9.19 pre-release is now available for testing, delivering various bug fixes and improvements.
  • Bisq v2.1.3 pre-release is now available for testing. It introduces new reputation requirements for traders, adds a new profile card, improves the offer wizard, and more.
  • Tribe RGB v0.2.7, a mobile Bitcoin wallet for managing Bitcoin and RGB assets, adds the ability to issue non-fung assets with unique characteristics, send assets instantly as donations, optional registry listing, UTXO overview, improved UI, and more.
  • Dana wallet v0.3.0, an Android wallet for accepting bitcoin donations via Silent Payments, is now available. It now displays available balance above the amount field, adds 'reset to default' option, implements simple automatic coin selection, and more.
  • Vortex v1.1, a Raycast extension that allows you to control any Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) wallet or node on macOS devices, adds the ability to receive bitcoin via ecash tokens and claim LNURL-withdraw invoices, implements fiat amounts and fiat denominated invoices, and improves the view of transactions list and details.
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  • Mempal v1.5.0, a Bitcoin mempool monitoring and notification app for Android, is now available. Users can now tap the Mempal logo to open a web browser to mempool.space or an equivalent custom mempool server. It also fixes a bug when the notification service is manually dismissed from the status bar, solves update issues with widget implementation, and optimizes the app's overall performance while also reducing its size.
    • Mempal v1.5.1 disables APK dependency metadata and fixes a minor color mismatch in the combined widget.
  • jamesob wrote a standalone BIP-32 library in C with minimal dependencies.
  • Olas v0.2.0, an Instagram-like Nostr client, has been released. It comes with multi-image uploads, Instagram-like filters, Nostr-native wallet improvements, and more. Available on Android and iOS.
  • Macadamia wallet v0.2.1, a native Cashu wallet for iOS devices, is the first release to be published on the App Store. It brings UI and user onboarding improvements, v4 token support, drops multi-mint token redeem capability, and more.
  • Iris.to, Nostr web client developed by Martti Malmi, now comes with an integrated Cashu wallet.
Source: npub1xv4nguuzdydh9r88skz5ud2963hzylzmsv9s5fwjlu7cnclzj69q9pjuuk.
  • Cashu-ts v2.2.0, a TypeScript library for building Cashu wallets, introduces a completely new bundling pipeline. It also delivers all the components needed to host a standalone bundle of cashu-ts and adds a new method for creating outputs and proofs, allowing library users to take full control over the process.
  • Ditto, a decentralized, self-hosted social media server for community building across platforms, now comes with search filters for videos, media, and specific cross-protocol posts (Nostr, Fediverse, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc.). "You can also combine multiple filters to find, for example, videos only from Nostr," said the project.
  • Kanbanstr, a kanban board implementation over Nostr, now supports card linking and extensive filtering.
  • Pokey v0.1.4-alpha, a 'pull-notification' client for Nostr events on Android, now separates permanent and note notifications into two groups managed by Android settings and displays the number of connected relays as part of the permanent notification.
  • Amber v3.2.1, a Nostr event signer for Android devices, adds additional details when signing a contact list, refactors the check for logged-in accounts, and more.
  • Nak v0.11.1, a command-line tool for managing Nostr activities, has been released. It now includes the Nak wallet with NIP-60 token support alongside a few other new features.
  • Fedimint v0.6.0-rc2 is now available for testing.
  • The latest stacker.news release enables email login on the iOS progressive web app (PWA) and includes several accessibility improvements along with minor fixes.
  • Corny Chat v2025.01, an open source audio space built on Jam that integrates Nostr and Lightning, includes initial GIF search implementation via GifBuddy.lol and supports Custom Emoji Packs, among other features and improvements.
  • Vertex is a fast, reliable, and open-source Web of Trust Data Vending Machine (DVM) service based on the Personalized Pagerank algorithm.
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  • SwissBitcoinPay app v2.3.7, an easy-to-use solution for merchants to accept bitcoin payments, fixes expired invoice issues and optimizes point-of-sale layout for small screen devices.
  • LND v0.18.5-beta.rc1 is now available for testing. This minor release includes a fix for a bug with AMP invoices, performance improvements for Postgres database backends, UX enhancements for custom channels, along with the usual bug fixes and stability improvements.
  • River introduced a Zero Fees plan for open-source Bitcoin contributors and members of non-profits that aid the funding of Bitcoin developers. Eligible participants must be based in the United States.
  • Privacy-focused search engine Kagi has switched to a fair pricing mode, among some other service improvements and enhancements.
  • Unleashed.chat, an AI chatbot designed with privacy in mind, now includes the DeepSeek R1 32B model.
  • SimpleX Chat v6.3.0-beta.2 is now available for testing. It adds mentions-only notifications mode for groups, fast group deletion, supports on-device message expiration per chat, and more.
  • ESP-Miner v2.6.0b1 (BitaxeOS) is now available for testing.
  • GrapheneOS v2025020500 is a full February security patch release.

Guides and research

  • Bitcoin Optech #340 covers zero-knowledge gossip for LN channel announcements, optimal cluster linearizations, updates on Erlay protocol, LN ephemeral anchor scripts, an OP_RAND emulation proposal for privacy without consensus changes, and lowering the minimum transaction feerate.
  • HRF's Financial Freedom Report #60 is available here.
  • Satochip has put together a guide on building your own simple Bitcoin signing smartcard for under $25.
  • Spiral has published a blog post recapping the progress on the development of Payjoin.
"Speaking of, looking ahead to Q1 2025, the team is prioritizing wider Payjoin adoption while working to stabilize their V2 API for a 1.0 release and upcoming audit. Several promising integrations are in progress, including work with Cake Wallet and hopefully with LDK Node for lightning-payjoin integration," said the project.
  • Tim has published a blog post about the extent of tracking and surveillance via in-app ads on mobile.
  • Jeff Park has shared a quick analysis of the impact of tariffs and what they might mean for Bitcoin in 2025.
  • Check out this simple TailsOS guide by Privacy Guides.
  • OrangeSurf has published a Block Size Report for Mempool Research, providing a data-driven analysis of Bitcoin block size, revealing how growth was partially constrained by miner policy and Bitcoin Core defaults over the years.
  • Rizful has a detailed guide on becoming an advanced Nostr user with the power of Bitcoin and Lightning today.
  • BTC Sessions has created a new tutorial for setting up an Umbrel node.
  • Atlas21 has written a guide on how to start using the Liquid Network.
  • Lighspark Engineering has published a case study on building Sparknodes using the Lightning Dev Kit (LDK).
  • Bitcoin Core PR Review Club meeting discussed cluster mempool and TxGraph. Notes and other details are available here.
  • The most recent blog post by BitBox explores how multisignature schemes built on Taproot can improve privacy and lower transaction fees.
  • ValentinoZ has recorded a comprehensive tutorial for using the Liana wallet.

Mining stats

  • Bitcoin mining difficulty has increased by +5.61% at block height 883008, reaching a new all-time high of 114.17T.
  • The network's hashrate (7-day simple moving average) is currently at ~809 EH/s.

Lightning stats

Nostr stats

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