Good Morning, Bitcoin - Thursday, August 29th, 2024

GM. Do you feel it? Today is Thursday, August 29th, 2024, and the vibes are high these days. It's beautiful to watch the space buzzing with action lately, and here's just a tiny glimpse of that.

What's new

• Bitcoin mining difficulty adjusted up to 89.47T at block height 858,816.

• Telegram CEO Pavel Durov officially charged by the French court and is now out on €5 million bail, with a ban on leaving the country. French court indicted Durov on six preliminary charges, including complicity in drug trafficking, spreading child sexual assault material, and aiding organized crime. He is also accused of obstructing the investigation into his company.
  • It is absurd to suggest Durov could be implicated in any crime committed on the app, his lawyer, David-Olivier Kaminski, told the AFP news agency, adding:

"Telegram complies in all respects with European rules concerning digital technology."

• Binance admits to freezing Palestinian accounts at Israel's Request. The company refutes claims that it seized funds from 'all Palestinians,' clarifying that only 'a small number of accounts' were restricted. The exact number of affected users remains unclear.

• OpenSats announces support for The Tor Project. This grant will expand The Tor Project's onion service team to enhance DDoS protection and ensure reliable, anonymous communication, crucial for Bitcoin and nostr users in censored regions.
• Important questions are being asked in the German Parliament. The German party Die Linke is questioning the government on the use of blockchain surveillance software and and crypto mixers to prevent "financial crime." The inquiry follows the takedown of various online portals, leading to the seizure of over €2 billion in bitcoin.

Per The Rage, the party is asking "what development contracts, procurement, usage, and planning for future use exist on the part of federal authorities for which software that is or will be used for the seizure of cryptocurrency, and what are the minimum requirements regarding error rates and verifiability of the software and its results, as well as the criminal procedure requirements that necessitate its use?"

• Breez announced a partnership with Elysium. Elysium is 'a next-generation' multicoin wallet that generates and uses new keys dynamically for each transaction, enhancing security by minimizing key theft risks.
• Lightspark introduced Lightspark Extend. Lightspark Extend, a compliant, low-cost, 24/7 integration, allows UMA and Lightning wallets, exchanges, or bank accounts to send bitcoin payments. The company says it is compatible with 99% of US banks accepting real-time payments, and enables seamless payments to eligible recipients.

🚀 NOW LIVE: Lightspark Extend connects Lightning to eligible US account holders in real-time. With Lightspark Extend, seamlessly send UMA-powered payments to eligible US recipients instantly and at a low cost. Learn more here: https://t.co/B2O0or8e9k pic.twitter.com/F85VraLknl

— Lightspark (@lightspark) August 28, 2024

• CoinFlip's official Mexico expansion. The American Bitcoin ATM firm has announced an "official expansion to Mexico," launching 20 Bitcoin ATMs in various retail locations.
• Meanwhile, the first Bitcoin ATM charge in the UK claims a small shop owner laundered ~$400K. Habibur Rahman, a UK phone shop owner, was charged with laundering ~$400K via a Bitcoin ATM. During his arrest in April 2023, police seized various ATMs from his shop located in Chatham, Kent, including one Bitcoin ATM on public display. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned unregistered crypto ATMs in 2022 and immediately launched a crackdown. Today, CoinATM Radar estimates that no Bitcoin ATMs remain in the UK.

Use the tools

• Keet v3.9.0 is now out on all mobile stores and desktop. The peer-to-peer chat app includes the ability to reply with quotes, improves the loading of lobby and rooms, supports the generation of random names during profile setup, and offers many more fixes and improvements.
• Nostr Web Services (NWS) v0.1, a resilient connectivity solution that leverages NOSTR as a transport for TCP, brings support for exit node internet relays, .nostr domain support, and reverse TCP connect mode.

• Fonta1n3 shared a work-in-progress (WIP) implementation of Fully Noded - Server. It is a one click tool for running Bitcoin Core, Core Lightning and Join Market.
• Phoenix Server v0.3.4 (phoenixd) adds an optional expiry for BOLT11 invoices and a best-effort method for estimating liquidity fees.
• Stacker.news now supports phoenixd as an attached wallet for sending and receiving payments, as well as the ability to attach LNbits instances hosted at onion addresses. Other changes include the removal of free posting, with the exception of comments, and a variety of bug fixes.
• Live Wallet v0.5.0, a tool for estimating the effect of Bitcoin transaction fees on individual UTXOs and transactions containing multiple UTXOs, now comes with transaction output count selection, batch vs single transaction UI, and the ability to remove fee rate colors.

• Amber v1.3.3, a Nostr signer for Android, delivers several fixes and updated dependencies.
• Lume v4.1.1 fixes an issue preventing the import of ncryptsec keys.
• Blitz wallet announced a 3 million sats bounty for the conversion of Liquid Wallet Kit (LWK) to a React Native package, which will be used to finalize their app for release on iOS.

Other stuff

• Grant Gilliam shared an insightful presentation on the concept of satsflows, which is relevant to anyone attempting to build a business on bitcoin.

• Some altcoin startups looking to onboard new developers discovered a 'creative' way to fend off North Korean hackers by asking the potential candidates to type "Fuck North Korea."
• Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the passing of legendary Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney. Matt Odell dedicated an episode of Citadel Dispatch to speak with his wife, Fran Finney. Watch it here.

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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