Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, August 14th, 2024

GM. It is Wednesday, August 14th, and here's your freshly cooked and still steaming homemade GM report.

What's happening

• Public Data Company Breach. A class action lawsuit claims Jerico Pictures Inc. (National Public Data) was hacked earlier this year, exposing 2.9 billion confidential records, primarily of U.S. citizens, stolen by the hacker group USDoD. The exposed data for potentially hundreds of millions of people includes full names, Social Security numbers, current and past addresses, and information about relatives, including deceased family members.
• Goldman Sachs Holds Over $400M in Spot Bitcoin ETFs. The banking giant revealed $418 million in Bitcoin ETF holdings, indicating growing institutional interest. Their largest position is $240 million in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust.
• Core Scientific to offer $350 million in convertible senior notes. The company announced that these unsecured notes will mature on September 1, 2029, with interest payable semi-annually. Terms like interest rate are still pending, and an option to buy an additional $52.5 million in notes may also be granted to initial buyers.
• Leadership Overhaul at Bitfarms. Ben Gagnon, recently promoted to CEO of Bitfarms, has been appointed to the board of directors. Founder and former chairman Nicolas Bonta has stepped down from the board, effective immediately, and has been replaced with lead director Brian Howlett, who is now the independent chairman. Liam Wilson will be the new Chief Operating Officer of Bitfarms, effective August 26.
• Chun Wang to Lead SpaceX Mission. Chun Wang, co-founder of the Bitcoin mining pool f2pool and a prominent member of the Bitcoin community, is slated to lead SpaceX’s inaugural human spaceflight mission to explore Earth's polar regions from orbit, reports Bitcoin Magazine.
• Riot Platforms Increases Ownership in Bitfarms to 18.9%. The company announced the purchase of an additional 1 million Bitfarms shares, bringing its total holdings to about 85.3 million shares.
• PlebLab's Startup Day in Mexico City. The event, set to explore the latest innovations in Bitcoin, will take place on September 19, 2024. Get your tickets here.

Use the tools

• Validating Lightning Signer v0.12 is out. The latest release includes enhanced security features, LSS support, logging improvements, various bug fixes, and policy updates.
• ZEUS has launched two new Olympus integrations: one with Lightning.pub, and another with Mutiny Wallet.
• Phoenix Wallet iOS v2.3.2 release brings BIP-353 LN addresses and contacts to Apple users.
• Aqua Wallet v0.2.1 adds more accurate status updates to the Lightning Send completion screen, which now correctly indicates pending until the transaction is completed, along with multiple bug fixes.
• Super Testnet introduced Bankify - a tool for turning any Cashu mint into a Lightning wallet with Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) support.
• BitAxe firmware ESP Miner v2.1.10 has been released. It fixes some issues introduced in v2.1.9.
• Clinch PvP Solitaire by THNDR Games is now available in the App Store. The app uses the Lightning Network to facilitate wager payments on-the-go.

• Foundation launched its Vault Concierge service, designed to guide users through the process of securely setting up 2-of-3 multisig vaults. Users will receive 3 Passport devices along with expert guidance.
• Speed Wallet, a custodial Lightning wallet with mandatory KYC for users in the United States, added support for USDT-L payments using the Taproot Assets protocol developed by Lightning Labs.
  • The company also recently launched Speed WordPress plugin for WooCommerce, enabling seamless on-chain and Lightning transactions for merchants.
• Boltz Client v2.1.1 includes multiple fixes and smaller improvements, an updated version of gdk, support for lowball transactions (lower fees on Liquid), and preparations for the upcoming BTCPay plugin.
• Bob McElrath has been working on a CPUNet - a new Bitcoin testnet for Braidpool testing and development, intended to be CPU-mined.
• uxto shared nostr-slack, a simple application for sending Nostr events directly to Slack channels.
• Bitcoin Connect v3.6.2 is a small bugfix release that uses canvas QR instead of data URL to prevent CSP errors.
• lnp2pbot developers issued a bunch of new bounties. Check them out here.
• OpenAgents, an AI productivity dashboard, has released its v2 beta with a new chat and auto-coding interface. The platform plans to integrate Lightning payments later this week.
• The release candidate for CLN v24.08 is out. Fire up your testing environment and help polish the final release.

Other stuff

• Jameson Lopp published an educational piece exploring how many Bitcoin seed phrases consist of only one repeated word.
• Alex Gladstein's latest article for Reason outlines how the Nostr protocol can improve the broken centralized social media landscape.
• lipa shared a blog post about its hybrid mobile app development approach, using Rust for core logic and native development for the UI.
• Bitcoinforgenz.org hosts a fun version of the Bitcoin Whitepaper dedicated to Gen Z.

• What else did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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