Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, September 11th, 2024

GM. It is Wednesday, September 11th, 2024, and here's your daily report on all things you may find relevant today.

What's new

• Bitcoin mining difficulty sets a new record. Bitcoin network difficulty rose 3.6% to a record 92.7T, surpassing the previous high of 90.67T from July 31. Hashprice dropped below $39/PH/s but hasn't hit the all-time low of $35.7/PH/s, reports The Miner Mag.

• (Another) Solo Bitcoin miner gets $181,000 after mining block 860749. The miner reportedly used ~82 PH/s to reap the reward of 3.169 BTC.

• Fed hits United Texas Bank with cease-and-desist order for serving 'Virtual Currency Customers.' The Fed issued a cease-and-desist order to United Texas Bank last Wednesday for "significant deficiencies" in adhering to anti-money laundering laws, especially in dealings with cryptocurrency customers. The company has previously collaborated with firms like the Stellar Foundation and Circle's USDC.
  • This is the second time in a month the Federal Reserve has acted against a 'crypto-adjacent' bank. In August, the Fed found "significant deficiencies" in Customers Bancorp, Inc.'s risk management and anti-money laundering procedures.
• Standard Chartered launches Bitcoin custody service in UAE. The service, licensed by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), follows a May 2023 memorandum of understanding. The bank chose the UAE for its balanced digital asset adoption and financial regulation.
• Worldcoin account sales investigation in Singapore. Bad actors illegally selling Worldcoin accounts and tokens are under investigation in Singapore for potential money laundering and terrorism financing. On August 7, Singapore police warned against selling or giving away Worldcoin accounts or tokens to prevent their use in criminal activities.
• Indonesian crypto exchange Indodax goes offline following a $22M hack. Multiple blockchain investigation firms alerted to an attack on an exchange's hot wallets, which was confirmed by the firm. Over 25 BTC was stolen, along with many more altcoins. Co-founder of the exchange, William Sutanto, stated that Indodax will cover all user losses from the hack.

• The total number of active Bitcoin ATMs decreased by 0.9 % in August. Canada saw the most activity this month with 53 new ATMs (1.8% increase), while New Zealand added 39 ATMs (31.7% increase). The United States had the most removals, with 343 ATMs removed (1.1% decrease) due to Digital Mint closing operations in August, per CoinATMradar report. BitAccess and Genesis Coin were the most active manufacturers.
• "No legal crypto ATM operators in the UK." The UK's financial regulator charged Olumide Osunkoya, a 45-year-old in London, for running a £2.6 million ($3.4 million) network of unregistered bitcoin ATMs. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) alleges he operated these ATMs, processing millions between December 29, 2021, and September 8, 2023, without its approval.
  • Osunkoya faces four charges: two under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act, and two under Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Transfer of Funds regulations.
  • "There are no legal crypto ATM operators in the UK," added the regulator.

Use the tools

• Tails 6.7 is out. The release includes update to OnionShare from 2.2 to 2.6, which now comes with ability to create an anonymous chat room.
• Foundation Passport firmware v2.3.2. This version of Passport’s firmware brings ephemeral seed support, adds the ability to sign messages via QR code, and introduces a connection flow for Fully Noded.
• Voyage v0.14.0, a lightweight Nostr client for Android, brings the ability to optionally show usernames in feeds, set q tags when mentioning events, and add client tags to posts and replies.
• Alby Go v1.4.2 is out with several smaller fixes.
• Radicle v1.0 is a new alternative peer-to-peer, local-first code collaboration stack built on Git.

Other stuff

• bconf.org is a new website aiming to list all Bitcoin conferences happening all over the world.
• Mullvad VPN sent a letter to the EU Parliament and Council on the issue of Chat Control.
• Here's an uplifting story on how one of the first taxi driver's to accept bitcoin in El Salvador now runs his own car rental company.

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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