Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, July 19, 2024

GM. It's Friday, July 19, and we're wrapping up the week with some of the latest updates from the world of Bitcoin, freedom tech, and a bit beyond.

What's happening

• Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 3.21% at block height 852768. It stands at 82.05T.

• Indian exchange WazirX experienced a security breach in one of its multisig wallets, resulting in a loss of funds exceeding ~$230 million. The stolen funds account for over 45% of the exchange's $500 million holdings, disclosed in a June report. The exchange's live proof of reserve site is currently down for maintenance.
• HashHouse, a provider of mining and immersion cooling solutions, reported to the LAPD that 880 units of its air-cooled Whatsminers were stolen during transportation last month. The cargo, consisting mainly of M50S++ and some M60s, is valued at approximately $3 million.
• Fractal ID, a KYC vendor for over 250 'crypto' projects, disclosed a data breach affecting over 50,000 individuals. The compromised information includes user names, email addresses, wallet addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and uploaded KYC documents.
• Block is closing down Cash App in the United Kingdom on September 15. The Bitcoin features were not available to British customers.
• OKX exchange announced that it will cease its services in Nigeria on August 16 citing recent changes in local laws and regulations.
• Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump invites individuals to a $844,600 roundtable at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville in late July.
• Developer Peter Todd posted a public disclosure to the Bitcoin Development Mailing list about a "free" relay attack that takes advantage of the lack of Full-RBF in Bitcoin Core.
  • Todd also shared some interesting numbers of the scaling limits of the Lightning Network.

Use the tools

• Lightning.Pub is a Nostr-native account system designed to "make running Lightning infrastructure for your family and customers easier than previously thought possible."
  • ShockWallet is "the first wallet to use Nostr-based accounts for Lightning Network connections."

• Zeus wallet released a hotfix for v0.8.5. It patches a display bug where LND REST and LNC remote connections would show all payments as failed, and a bug where the Contacts view would fail to render.
  • Zeus also rolled out v0.9.0-beta2 with multiple fixes and enhancements to its new CLNRest interface. It also adds BOLT 12 offer field for contacts.
• Nutsack vo.1 is a highly experimental NIP-60/61 client for a "wallet that lives in nostr and can be accessed from any nostr client that chooses to implement it."
  • You can also follow the flow of Nutzaps at nutlife.lol.
• Alby Extension v3.9.0 makes account menus more intuitive, extends kind lists, improves NWC connector and error messages for lndhub. Several bug fixes also include correcting notification amounts and addressing scrollbar issues in the extension popup. The update also introduces Alby logo to QR codes used for invoices, and implements better error handling for BIP-353 DNS addresses.
• Bitcoin Search v2 is a search engine for exploring the "depths of Bitcoin's technical ecosystem."
• 0xchat v1.3.0-beta2 is a bug fix release with multiple fixes and improvements.
• Merchants using Zaprite can now connect their PayPal accounts for additional checkout options.
• Phoenixd v0.3.1 adds BIP-353 fixes and support for multiple webhooks.
• rust-payjoin v0.19.0 and CLI v0.0.8-alpha attempt to stabilize the Payjoin V2 Bitcoin URI format.

Other stuff

• fiatjaf recently shared a post on how to properly do content curation and build businesses on Nostr.
• Daniel Batten published a research report challenging the claim that Bitcoin mining has an e-waste issue. Unsurprisingly, it finds that Bitcoin mining e-waste is an oxymoron, as it is highly profitable to recycle old ASICs.
• In this tutorial, Payjoin developer Dan Gould dives into the implementation of receiving bitcoin using a Payjoin transaction.

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