Good Morning, Bitcoin - Tuesday, August 20th, 2024

GM, and happy Tuesday, freedom builders and enthusiasts. Here's what's landed on our radar in the last 24 hours.

What's happening

• Bitcoin's issued supply passed the 94% milestone. According to the Clark Moody Bitcoin dashboard, there are slightly more than 1.2574 million BTC left to mine.

• OpenSats grants long-term support for Vitor Pamplona. Vitor is the creator of the Amethyst nostr client for Android and an architect of the new hyper-private DM protocol. He has also developed Sheetstr, a collaborative spreadsheet client, and Crafters, a nostr-based resume builder.
• Bitcoin Dev Kit (BDK) announced new full-time grantees. These include Rust/Golang developer and one of the architects of BDK v1.0, Evan Lin; Android engineer thunderbiscuit, who maintains the Padawan Wallet and leads the work on language bindings and the BDK Kotlin Example Wallet; Matthew Ramsden, an experienced iOS engineer focusing on language bindings and the Swift Example Wallet; and ValuedMammal, a Rust developer and node operator whose work includes research in mempool and P2P areas. A complete list of current BDK grantees can be found here.
• UK National Crime Agency's latest Risk Assessment. The UK National Crime Agency's latest Risk Assessment finds that "cryptoassets are increasingly used to launder non-digital proceeds of crime" and names increased risks to children through end-to-end encryption. However, the assessment provides no concrete data to back up its claims and stands in direct contrast to industry findings, reports L0la L33tz for The Rage.

• Nigeria to introduce cryptocurrency tax law. Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) said it intends to introduce a bill to tax bitcoin and other digital assets to parliament by September. "We just have to plan to regulate it in such a way that it is not injurious to the economic development of Nigeria," said Zacch Adedeji, Executive Chairman of the tax collection agency, according to local reports.
  • Per Bloomberg, Nigeria's SEC also plans to issue first virtual-asset licenses this month.
  • Last month, cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin announced it was starting to collect VAT on transaction fees for Nigerian users.
• Metaplanet now holds over 360 BTC. Japanese investment firm announced that it purchased an additional 57.273 bitcoin worth about $3.4 million. The latest purchase comes as part of the plan announced on August 8 after Metaplanet secured a $6.8 million loan to buy more bitcoin. 
• Malaysian police steamrolls close to a 1000 bitcoin miners (again). According to Malaysia Gazette, the Perak Tengah District police carried out the destruction of 985 bitcoin miners using a steamroller at their headquarters on Monday. The machines, worth about $450,000, were seized during raids targeting electricity theft since 2022. This action is part of ongoing efforts to combat 'illegal' mining operations that have plagued Malaysia since 2017
  • Over the weekend, a local news outlet also reported that seven individuals were arrested for suspected power theft for Bitcoin mining; 52 bitcoin miners were confiscated.

Ibu Pejabat Polis Daerah (IPD) Perak tengah melupuskan 985 peralatan yang digunakan dalam kegiatan perlombongan Bitcoin dianggarkan bernilai RM1.98, pada Isnin.#IPDPerak #Lupus #bitcoin

Video: Amirrul Rabbani Rashid pic.twitter.com/kEgdqTopCH

— Malaysia Gazette (@MalaysiaGazette) August 19, 2024

• The US Democratic Party platform omits Bitcoin, consistent with the Biden-Harris administration's historically unfriendly stance, reports Bitcoin Magazine.
• National Public Data published its own passwords. KrebsOnSecurity found that NPD's sister site, recordscheck.net, hosted an archive with administrator usernames, passwords, source code, and plain text login credentials until August 19. The site has a similar design and login pages as nationalpublicdata.com.
• 100+ Bitcoin merchants in Madeira. F.R.E.E. Madeira has announced a milestone of onboarding over 100 local merchants to Bitcoin.
• Sovereign Engineering Cohort 3. The third edition of SEC, focusing on ecash and Nostr, is set to take place from October 14 to December 6, 2024. Learn more about it here.

Use the tools

• bitaxeGamma is the 5th major revision of the fully open-source bitaxe Bitcoin ASIC miner, now including the BM1370 ASIC from the Antminer S21 Pro. "So far we've been able to pull 1 - 1.2 TH/s at around 15 J/TH from a single chip," said @skot9000.
• Stratum Benchmarking Tool v0.1.0 has been released. It is a comprehensive tool for measuring Stratum V2 and Stratum (V1) protocol performances in different contexts, designed to help the mining industry understand and benefit from the new protocol.
• ZEUS Wallet v0.9.0-rc1 is now available for testing.
• Olympus by ZEUS has also announced integration with Alby Hub.

• Phoenix Server v0.3.3 (phoenixd) adds an alternative authentication method for websocket, adds payerNote + payerKey to incoming payment events, and implements a fix for webhook exceptions.
• Chantools v0.13.2, a tool for rescuing funds locked in lnd channels, has been released.
• SATSuma v2.5.0 has been released. It is a free and open-source Bitcoin explorer, Xpub viewer, Bitcoin and Lightning dashboard available on Windows. It offers the option to create encrypted bookmarks and notes for addresses, blocks, xpubs, and transactions, view network, on-chain, and market charts, or use it as a 'watch-only' wallet.

• lnlp2pbot v0.11.0. This peer-to-peer Lightning Network Telegram trading bot now includes a new /privacy command, clearer messages for users, bug fixes, and code/documentation improvements.
• Fedi app v1.18.5 fixes crashes on iOS 15 and provides better logs for bug investigation.
• Zaprite introduced recurring invoices. The Bitcoin invoicing platform now supports Recurring Invoices that can be adopted to almost any payments schedule.
• YakiHonne mobile app v1.3.3. The latest update for a Nostr-based media platform that supports blogging, flash news, curation, videos, uncensored notes, zaps, and other content types, includes multiple fixes, such as manual sats amounts, second-time voting for zap polls, zap requests for Amber signer, and more.
• NostrDVM v0.8+, a framework for running NIP-90 Nostr Data Vending Machines (DVMs) now supports nutzaps (beta).

• Angor, a crowdfunding platform built on Bitcoin and Nostr, is now available for testing.
• clnrod is a Core Lightning (CLN) plugin that allows or denies incoming channel opens based on lists and/or a custom rule.
• Cake Wallet v4.19.4 adds ability to scan and verify messages.
• ePIC Blockchain has released UMC firmware v0.51.5 for supported Bitmain miners.
• HT Pool by HodlTarantula is now live.

Other stuff

• Michael Stewart shared a comprehensive guide for setting up Alby Hub.
• The Anatomy of Bitcoin is an open-source, community-funded film aimed at presenting a visual understanding of the mechanisms that make Bitcoin work.
• junseth dropped a new scammer interview. Listen to it here.

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