Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, August 2nd, 2024

GM. It's been almost a month of Good Morning Bitcoin daily reports, and we hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as we have. We're still fine-tuning the format and structure, but it feels like this has legs and is heading somewhere. A massive shoutout to xSilentG for sending us 160k sats earlier this week (and to everyone else) - every sat counts, and your support fuels our mission!

What's new

• "Virtual Assets Increasingly Used By Terrorist Groups," claims FATF. The latest report from The Financial Action Task Force claims to shed light on 'Virtual Assets' and 'Virtual Asset Service Providers,' asserting that "Virtual Assets are increasingly used by terrorist groups." Yet, this bombshell comes devoid of proper citations or verifiable data, leaving those who are following the surveillance narratives to question its credibility, reports The Rage.

"It is unbelievable that an organization with *such* low standards is being taken seriously at all, never mind allowed to guide the implementation of AML/CFT around the world," said investigative journalist L0la L33tz.

• MicroStrategy now holds 226,500 BTC. The corporation announced that since the beginning of the second quarter, it has acquired 12,222 BTC for $805.2 million. As of July 31, MicroStrategy’s total bitcoin holdings of 226,500 cost $8.3 billion, or $36,821 per coin. The firm is also filing paperwork to issue new equity to raise up to $2 billion.
  • The company also introduced a new key performance indicator (KPI) for its bitcoin strategy—BTC Yield, which is currently at 12.2% year-to-date. The target for each of the next three years is set to be 4-8% annually.

• Greenidge Generation to hodl self-mined bitcoin. New York-headquartered power generator and bitcoin miner said it will retain self-mined bitcoin in order to increase its bitcoin holdings. The company has also entered into a $20 million common stock purchase agreement.
• Brink welcomes Marco De Leon. Bitcoin development non-profit Brink announced that developer Marco De Leon has joined Brink to contribute to Bitcoin Core’s fuzz testing initiatives under the mentorship of Niklas Gögge. Together they will build out Bitcoin Core’s fuzz testing infrastructure.
• Bitcoin miner CleanSpark has acquired two 75-megawatt mining sites in Cheyenne, Wyoming, formerly operated by MineOne, for $18.75 million. This acquisition comes after the Biden administration halted MineOne's operations due to national security concerns regarding Chinese ownership near a U.S. Air Force base, reports The Miner Mag.
• EU, global leader in regulations, has clarified the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) rules. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a report advising firms on how to engage with overseas companies to ensure MiCA compliance. The guidance states that unauthorized firms cannot provide services to EU clients unless those clients reach out first.

Use the tools

• libsecp256k1 v0.5.1 increases the default signing table size from 22 KiB to 86 Kib, and adds example code for ElligatorSwift-based key exchange. It also resolves compilation issues when extrakeys module is disabled.
• Boardwalk Cash v0.2.0 introduces features such as profiles, contacts, and eTips.

Create an eTip by going to Send and clicking the Contact icon.

The eCash you create can only be claimed by that user.

Now you can post the eTip on any platform @X @instagram @tiktok_us @YouTube @Twitch

Show your support publicly without a middleman taking a cut! pic.twitter.com/ClNzUynAqD

— Boardwalk (@boardwalk_cash) July 31, 2024

• Satsails v1.0.0 is the initial release of a self-custodial app with atomic swaps across Bitcoin, Lightning and Liquid. The project is set to debut in September.
• satsstackingpleb has launched the first batch of StealthMiner JPro+, a 27-30TH SHA256 miner with average performance of ~24-26 J/T in the 650-750W operating range.

• Strike has announced Target Orders, enabling users to buy or sell bitcoin only when it reaches a specified price.
• bullishNuts v0.0.65 adds a paste button to the receive-ecash modal and allows users to check proofs.
• Amber v1.2.0, a Nostr event signer for Android, now supports sending NIPs as permissions rather than kinds, offers improved descriptions for NIP-29 event kinds, and enhances event sending with NIP-46.
• Holdboard is a simple forum featuring "Inns" (similar to subreddits) and "Solo" (for microblogging). It is a fork of freedit, and exists to demo one extra feature: access to the forum requires ownership of a single UTXO greater than 500K sats.
• randombtc is a bitcoin-based "random number generator that everybody can agree on."
• Acropolis is building the first comprehensive treasury solution, focusing on custody, advisory, and ancillary services.
• Arti v1.2.6, a next-generation Tor client in Rust, includes various bug fixes, cleanups, and improvements, along with enhancements to onion service client authorization, the RPC subsystem, and relay infrastructure.
• Torq v2.0.4 is a minor bug fix release that restores the functionality of the emergency recovery link on the dashboard.

Other stuff

• The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) published a study showing that Bitcoin mining benefits the environment by effectively removing the equivalent of 20 million cars from the road each year.
• The Human Rights Foundation's (HRF) Weekly Financial Freedom Report #34 is available here.
• Richard Greaser, a 'credentialed' investigative journalist for the satirical news site The Bitcoin Bugle, successfully trolled The Bitcoin Development Mailing List with a 'HODL Tax Proposal.'

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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