Good Morning, Bitcoin - Thursday, July 18, 2024

GM! It's Thursday, July 18, 2024. The next mining difficulty adjustment is expected within ~30 blocks, and although we can't pinpoint exactly what it is, there's something bullish in the air these days.

What's happening

• Arthur Hayes, Co-Founder of BitMEX and CIO at Maelstrom, a venture fund managed by his family office, announced a grant program to support open-source Bitcoin developers. According to the announcement, no-strings attached grants can range from $50,000 to $150,000 per developer. Applications must be submitted prior to August 25, 2024.
• StarkWare announced a significant milestone by successfully verifying its first zero-knowledge (ZK) proof using its new STARK verifier on the Bitcoin Signet network. This verifier paves the way for developing ZK-based layer-2 (L2) solutions aimed at enhancing Bitcoin scalability and advancing global payment prospects.

"This was a tremendous effort and took a significant amount of time. We started with nothing. There’s no information about ZK proofs on Bitcoin. There’s no information regarding the mathematical operations to follow. We had to build the full stack, which eventually led to the implementation of the STARK verifier," developer Weikeng Chen told Bitcoin Magazine.

• German authorities announced that the sale of nearly 50,000 BTC generated $2.88 billion, with an average price of $57,900 per coin.

• The share of the global hashrate held by U.S.-listed bitcoin miners recently hit a record 26.6%, according to a JPMorgan research report published on Tuesday. The bank noted that every miner, except Stronghold Digital, outperformed Bitcoin in the first two weeks of July.
• Speaking of JPMorgan, reports have surfaced citing former US President Donald Trump, who mentioned that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has "changed his tune a little bit" regarding Bitcoin and other digital assets. However, the original interview transcript does not clarify exactly what was meant by that.
• U.S.-based public miner Cipher Mining is reportedly considering a potential sale following interest in a takeover. Discussions are in the preliminary stages. The company is currently valued at around $2.2 billion.
• Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Bitcoin mining could lead to significant power shortages in some regions of the country. He emphasized that the new law should include regulations on taxes and electricity tariffs for mining farms. Putin also praised the experimental introduction of the digital rouble and called for an expansion of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) program.
• Multiple users on Reddit claim to have seen brute-force login attempts on their Mt. Gox accounts. The Mt. Gox claims website currently indicates it is down for maintenance.

• The Bitnodes dashboard is showing a significant drop in reachable Bitcoin nodes. However, other sources that publish data on reachable Bitcoin nodes, such as Luke Dashjr and 21 Ninja, haven't reflected this drop, reports stacker.news user @Scoresby.

Use the tools

• Phoenix Wallet v2.3.4 for Android fixes compatibility issue with some BOLT12 offers, brings BIP-353 and BIP-21 improvements, and sets payer-key behavior per contact.
• Blitz v0.2.3-beta is now available for testing. It is a React Native application that combines the best of Breez, Boltz, Blockstream, and Nostr for a seamless and simple payment experience.

• 0xchat app v1.3.0-beta is here. It comes with NIP-29 public and closed groups and group notes, private group chats with NIP-17 chat room implementation, reactions and zaps for chat messages, one-tap zaps, and numerous performance improvements and optimizations.
• Gossip v0.11.0, a nostr client for desktop, now implements secure direct messaging with NIP-17, 'load more' optimization, and message annotations.
• Amethyst v0.89.2 is a bug fix release for TopNav lists and invalid ID crashes.
• Onramp launched Trading and Transaction Protection for all Multi-Institution Custody clients. The company also introduced new pricing structure, inheritance enhancements, and onboarding flow.

We at @OnrampBitcoin are thrilled to announce the launch of Onramp Trading and Transaction Protection for all Multi-Institution Custody clients!

Onramp clients can seamlessly acquire bitcoin on our platform and achieve final settlement into their Multi-Institution Custody vault… pic.twitter.com/czPYm6qKPz

— Michael Tanguma (@MTanguma) July 17, 2024

• Braiins OS v24.06 is the latest firmware update for hardware by Bitmain and Braiins Mini Miner.
• Cashu TS, a TypeScript library for building Cashu wallets, released its first major version, v1.0.0.
• Askeladd is a proof-of-concept for a censorship-resistant global proving network. It leverages the Nostr protocol as the communication layer.
• Timechain Calendar announced a gallery overhaul in v0.5.17.

Other stuff

• Calle published the first demo of Nostr Web Services (NWS) bringing TCP to Nostr.

• The developer also shared a schematic on how NWS works.

• Nikita Mazurov published an article on how to use Signal without sharing your personal phone number.
• Joe Nakamoto recently shared a video report on how people are using bitcoin in a remote village in Peru.

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