By EZ in Daily Roundup — Jul 17, 2024

Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Good Morning, Bitcoin is a daily news roundup covering key stories, project updates, releases, guides, research and other Bitcoin and freedom tech-related topics.

GM. It’s Wednesday, July 17, 2024, and we hope you’re ready to have the best day possible. Here are the latest app launches, releases, protocol updates, and news headlines to get you started.

P.S. Be sure to tag us in your news or release announcements or send us a DM on Nostr if you want your update included in the next GM issue. We do have a crystal ball and will find your updates regardless, but a bit more two-way interaction is always nice.

No Bullshit Bitcoin relies on community donations.

What's happening

The verdict was released for Craig Wright following his defeat in the COPA vs. CSW trial. Judge Mellor wrote that Wright’s conduct warrants a referral to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider initiating a criminal investigation on charges of forgery and perjury.
- In related news, the Bitcoin whitepaper is once again available on Bitcoin.org for people living in the United Kingdom.

New Spiral grantees. The Simple Kid is working on Cashu Dev Kit (CDK), while Sivaram is enhancing secp256k1-zkp FROST, a new signing scheme threshold (multisig) with better privacy.
North Tonawanda, a city in Niagara County, New York, has approved a two-year moratorium on new data center operations, bitcoin mining, and the expansion of existing facilities.
The Liquid Federation has announced nine new members: Alby, Botev Plovdiv FC, Breez, Changelly, Daedalus, Ditobanx, eNor Securities, Peach Bitcoin, and Spirit of Satoshi. It now consists of a total of 73 Bitcoin-focused projects.
Trump's presidential campaign has received $3 million via bitcoin and 'crypto' donations, a fraction of the total $331 million raised in Q2. Notable donors include the Winklevoss twins and Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell.
Lightspark, Lightning Network infrastructure and services provider for enterprises, has partnered with Latin American exchange Bitso to bring the Lightning Network services to its 8 million retail clients and 1,700 institutional customers.
Bitcoin Tokyo 2024 conference is set to take place on September 21-22, 2024, in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Financial technology firm Stripe has expanded its 'crypto' integration into the European Union, allowing shoppers to buy bitcoin and some other coins using their credit or debit cards. The integration enables online vendors using Stripe to add a 'crypto-purchase' widget on their sites, which also manages charges, disputes, and KYC compliance details.

Project updates and releases

Tails v6.5 is out. This release makes installation with Tails Cloner up to ~30 seconds faster.
Arti v1.2.2, the next-generation Tor client written in Rust, now supports Vanguards, a defense against guard discovery attacks targeting hidden services and hidden service clients. The implementation is based on the research behind Tor's Vanguards add-on, and offers similar protections to its Vanguards component.

rust-nostr v0.33.0 adds better outputs for send/batch/reconcile methods, allow to change NIP-42 option after client initialization, increase max stack size for JS bindings to prevent "memory access out of bounds" error, and more.
Bitkey users will now see MoonPay appear alongside Cash App and Coinbase options to purchase bitcoin. Over the past few months, the project also shipped support for multiple fingerprints, display the status of incoming transactions, and biometric sign-in.
Boltz backend v3.7.2 fixes some edge case bugs, improves the tooling for operating the backend, and also includes two new features for API clients: overpayment protection (swaps that send too much onchain will be failed) and custom descriptions for invoices created for Reverse Swaps.
Braiins Pool has implemented Direct Lightning Invoice requests to support simple lightning payouts for miners with non-custodial wallets.
Pillbox v0.1.0 is a free and open-source, user-friendly desktop application designed to simplify L402 access management. L402 is a protocol that allows servers to request proof of payment before processing an HTTP request, making it an excellent fit for data or API monetization.
The Bitcoin Company has launched prepaid Mastercards (up to $500) for its United States users. EUR and CAD cards will be launched by mid-August, the company said.
Bringin, a regulated European Bitcoin banking startup, announced that its mobile app is now available for testing on both iOS and Android.

Lava introduced Lava Vault- a self-custody app for those who want to save in bitcoin and spend in dollars. The app now supports having multiple self-custody vaults within 1 app. Available on iOS and Android.
Strike Dashboard, a web-based desktop interface of Strike, now supports 2-Factor Authentication (2FA).
Amethyst v0.89.0, the 'Swiss Army knife Nostr client' for Android users, now includes with Profile Galleries, flexible NIP-96 image server settings, support for Base64 images and GIFs, and relay recommendations based on the outbox model.

Swarmstr build v0.39.0, a free and open-source Nostr Q&A client, adds ability to see notes with most reactions for each hashtag in recent feed, as well who zapped, boosted or reacted to a particular note.
BTCPay Server v1.13.5 is a minor release with a couple of bug fixes.
GrapheneOS v2024071600 is the latest release for the privacy and security focused mobile OS.
Nostr Zap v1.0.0, a tool for zapping any Nostr npub or note from anywhere, has been released.