Good Morning, Bitcoin - Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

GM. It is Tuesday, September 10th, 2024, and here's your latest Bitcoin news digest. Enjoy!

What's new

• At least 280 Android apps use OCR to steal cryptocurrency. Researchers found over 280 malicious Android apps using optical character recognition to steal cryptocurrency wallet credentials. Disguised as official apps from banks, government services, and utilities, they scan infected phones for text messages, contacts, and stored images, sending this data to remote servers. Distributed via malicious sites and phishing messages, none of these apps were found on Google Play.
• Japan's largest electricity provider explores Bitcoin mining. Agile Energy X Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), is exploring Bitcoin mining using renewable energy sources. "What we are doing has few parallels in Japan. Success of our framework would prompt more green energy to be introduced," said Kenji Tateiwa, president of the company.
• 10101.finance is shutting down. "We've done a lot of reflecting, and we know what we have built is not receiving the traction and growth we wanted it to have. We also know it won't scale easily to the masses either, due to technical limitations," said 10101 founder Philipp Hoenisch.
• FBI reports a 45% surge in losses tied to cryptocurrency fraud in 2023. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 69,000 cryptocurrency-related complaints, totaling $5.6 billion in losses. These amount to 10% of financial fraud complaints and about half of the total losses, reports The Block.
• Swan warns of another phishing campaign. "We just became aware that this fake phishing email was sent to some Swan clients. Do not follow any instructions in this FAKE email," said the company.

• Metaplanet buys more bitcoin. The publicly listed Japanese company said it had purchased 38.6 BTC for 300 million yen (~$2.2 million). It now holds 398.8 BTC, reports Bitcoin Magazine, whose parent company UTXO Management is also an investor in Metaplanet.
• Monochrome Bitcoin ETF (IBTC) to implement proof-of-reserves. Monochrome Asset Management partnered with Hoseki to offer daily proof-of-reserves for its Bitcoin holdings. This integration also allows direct Bitcoin applications and redemptions, ensuring privacy and transparency.
• Antpool, F2Pool to support Fractal Bitcoin merge mining. Two of the top five bitcoin mining pools now support merge mining with Fractal Bitcoin, a sidechain launched on Monday. Fractal Bitcoin uses "Cadence Mining," allowing bitcoin miners to merge-mine every third block, while the other two blocks are for Fractal Bitcoin miners only. The sidechain supports BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals, aiming to offload these transactions from the Bitcoin network, writes The Miner Mag.
• Bit Block Boom 2025 to take place on April 3-6, 2025. Event tickets are available at https://bitblockboom.com/.

Use the tools

• RoboSats v0.7.0-alpha is here. This version comes with Android built-in torified notifications, a RoboSats desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and a Nostr-enabled order book.
• Mercury Layer v0.2.0 update fixes vulnerabilities (disclosed by CONDUITION here) related to malicious backup transactions bypassing receiver verification checks.
• Amethyst v0.91.0 finishes Edge to Edge transition for Android 15, adds compression settings to the media uploading screen, introduces sliding animations in all inner screens, enables the use of hidden words for all visible properties of the user, and more.

• Phoenix Wallet Android v2.3.8 release fixes an issue related to the legacy mode which could crash the app and includes improvements to the navigation and screen lock system.
• Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.10 brings ability to log in with singlesig watch-only wallet, ensures the application is usable with a smaller window size, and improves detection of the Tor circuit.
• Sentinel v5.1.0, a watch-only bitcoin wallet tracker for managing multiple wallets and addresses on Android, has been released. It comes with bug fixes, UI changes, updated Tor library, PSBT enhancements, and other improvements.
• Alby Extension v3.9.1 is out. It includes several bug fixes, translation updates, adds a new identifier for authentication URLs, and other minor improvements.
• Alby Go v1.4.1, a simple mobile Lightning wallet interface and a companion app for Alby Hub, is out with several fixes and improvements.
• Blitz Wallet v0.2.7-beta is the first Blitz beta to include experimental support for eCash.

• Cashu-ts v1.1.0, a JavaScript library for Cashu wallets written in TypeScript, is out now. This release is focused on the new Cashu token format v4, drastically reducing token size via CBOR encoding.
• Cashu Dev Kit v4.0.0 is out. Check out the release notes here.
• 0xchat v1.3.3 adds SOCKS proxy settings and .onion host options. Push notifications can now be received by connecting to at least one default general relay.
• Citrine v0.4.4 is the latest bug fix release for a local Nostr relay on Android devices.
• utxo published Web of Trust Relay. It is a Nostr relay that saves all the notes that people you follow, and people they follow, are posting. It's built on the Khatru framework.

• Foro.kiwi by KoalaSat is an old-school forum-styled long-form Nostr client.
• Nos.social v0.1.26 brings quote-reposting, a new image viewer, in-app profile photo editor, and a variety of bug fixes and improvements.
• The latest stacker.news release fixes problems with Alby's NWC relay, adds ability to zoom on images and play videos from notifications, and support for Wawlake, Nostr, and Spotify embeds, among other things
• Live Wallet v0.7.0, a desktop application to help users understand their current and future UTXO fee burdens, comes with a consolidation mode - a feature to help with consolidating UTXOs.

• CLN App v0.0.6 is the latest release of the official Core Lightning application by Blockstream.
• Swiss Bitcoin Pay app v2.1.2 comes with better support for underpaid on-chain payments.
• LNbits v1.0.0-rc1 is now available for testing.
• Marti Malmi launched new.iris.to with a spam-free (ReplyGuy-free) experience. Now it hides replies from people who are not in your social graph, and also includes the 'Adventure' feed displaying all notes from your social graph.

Other stuff

• Ron Stoner is documenting a list of known attacks on the Nostr protocol.
• A new tutorial on how to set up an Onion Site by Super Testnet is now available on PlebTV.com.
• BTC Sessions released a comprehensive tutorial on how to use Wasabi Wallet to hold, CoinJoin, and secure your bitcoin.

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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