Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, August 16th, 2024

GM, and in case we don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. Here’s your Friday edition of our GM report, featuring the latest in Bitcoin, freedom tech, and more.

What's happening

• #EndBadGovernance: Nigeria freezes $37 million USDT. The Nigerian government has frozen over $37 million in USDT believed to belong to organizers of the #EndBadGovernance protests. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) classified the funds as proceeds of money laundering and terrorism financing.

• Iran is hunting 'unauthorized' bitcoin miners. According to local media, the country is offering $20 bounty to anyone who reports "every single unauthorized cryptocurrency mining equipment." Iran is reportedly facing a severe heatwave that's currently crippling its industrial production.
• Norway is stacking bitcoin via MicroStrategy. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, has invested $217 million in MicroStrategy, giving it 0.89% ownership and 0.45% voting rights. The fund, which manages 18 trillion Krone ($1.7 trillion), has been purchasing MicroStrategy equity since 2008 and has more than tripled its investment in the past year, according to a Protos report.
• Similarly, South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS) acquired $34 million worth of shares in MicroStrategy.
• Bitdeer to expand operations with $150M convertible notes offering. Bitdeer Technologies Group, a Singapore-based crypto mining company, has announced plans for a $150 million public offering of convertible notes due in 2029 to expand its data center and develop ASIC-based mining rigs.
• CleanSpark orders 7.8 EH/s of S21XP miners for $167M. The second-largest public Bitcoin mining firm by realized hashrate has announced an expansion of its mining capabilities with a preorder of 7.8 EH/s for $167.7 million, reports The Miner Mag.
• IMF 'experts' propose 85% electricity price hike for bitcoin miners. Using outdated and widely debunked data, IMF economists have concluded that a $0.089 per kilowatt hour tax would yield "$5.2 billion in annual revenue and cut carbon emissions by 100 million tons."
• The Mining Conference 2024 will take place on September 27-29 in Minnesota. Tickets are more information are available here.

Use the tools

• The latest Nunchuk wallet updates (iOS v1.9.50, Android v1.9.49, and desktop v1.9.37) introduce a new Byzantine role ('Facilitator Admin') that can help clients set up wallets but is blinded to the wallet balance and transaction history. The updates also include improved Portal signing device integration, syncing performance optimizations, bug fixes, and other enhancements.
• Blockstream Jade firmware v1.0.31 is here. This release includes automatic validation of change outputs when signing with Green Wallet's 'Multisig Shield' PSBTs, a new CLI tool for simple interaction and testing, and many other UX and security improvements.
• YakiHonne, a Nostr platform for long-form content, has introduced Smart Widgets for custom and enhanced user experience.

• Ginger Wallet v2.0.10, a fork of privacy-focused Wasabi Wallet with a hardcoded default coordinator that sends all coinjoin input transactions to a chain surveillance partner, added one-click transaction viewing on mempool.space, client-side checks for coinjoin parameters, and several bug fixes and improvements.
• Yuki Kishimoto released rust-nostr v0.34.0, which adds embedded Tor client support, allows for databases with limited capacity, and includes many new features, improvements, and bug fixes.
• Ressurection Wallet v.0.5.0, a desktop frontend for Phoenix Server (phoenixd) on Linux machines, packages several fixes and improvements.
• CLBOSS v0.13.3 fixes an important bug by restoring the earned fee
  information.
• Boltz Backend v3.7.3 addresses performance issues by adding OpenTelemetry tracing, more Prometheus metrics, and introduces the sidecar, which runs as a child process of the Node.js application. It also adds webhooks for swap status updates, custom description hashes for Reverse Swaps invoices, custom Bitcoin Core and Elements wallet names, and more.
• Voltz Wallet (not to be confused with Volt Wallet) is a new custodial Lightning Network wallet that supports on-chain Bitcoin transactions, Lightning Network payments, and eCash.
• Blink Wallet v0.20.213 has been released with several improvements.
• Core Lightning (CLN) v24.08 release candidate 2 is now available for testing.

Other stuff

• The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute has added Satoshi's emails from the P2P Research List.
• Lava published the whitepaper for Lava Loans Protocol v2.
• ZachXBT uncovered over 25 crypto projects that, unbeknownst to them, hired North Korean hackers as developers using fake identities.

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