Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

GM. It is Wednesday, September 25th, 2024. Privacy is not only normal, it is required for a free society. Enjoy your daily digest.

What's happening

• BOLT12 is now a part of the official Lightning Specification. It is a significant enhancement to the Lightning Network, streamlining payments, improving privacy, and supporting new use cases like subscriptions and advanced payment conditions.

• Seventh wave of OpenSats Bitcoin grants awared to eight bitcoin projects. Grantees include:
  • Kyoto. A simple, memory-conservative, and private Rust-based Bitcoin light client for developers to build wallet applications.
  • Minibits is a mobile Cashu wallet combining Bitcoin and the Lightning Network for a seamless payment experience.
  • DLC Dev Kit. An application tooling kit that simplifies the integration of Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs) into Bitcoin projects.
  • Cove is a BDK-based mobile wallet with hardware signing support, PSBT via NFC, QR codes, virtual drives, coin control, and watch-only wallets, designed for simplicity and accessibility.
  • Nutmix - a Cashu protocol mint implementation focused on ease of use and feature completeness.
  • ASmap. The project maps IP address blocks to Autonomous Systems (AS) to bolster Bitcoin Core's defense against eclipse attacks by ensuring nodes aren't overly connected to peers controlled by a single entity.
  • Floresta. A lightweight Bitcoin full node implementation written in Rust, powered by Utreexo a novel dynamic accumulator designed for the Bitcoin UTXO set.
  • AssumeUTXO in Bitcoin Core App. This project aims to integrate AssumeUTXO functionality into the Bitcoin Core App (BCA).
• Binance denies data breach concerning 13 million users. Daily Dark Web reported a potential data breach exposing personal details of nearly 13 million Binance users on the dark web. However, a Binance spokesperson denied this, stating their security team found no evidence of a data leak.
• German government plans expansion of bank account surveillance. A proposed "security package" aims to expand the German Federal Police's (BKA) surveillance capabilities over bank accounts flagged for suspicious activity and transaction reports, writes L0la L33tz for The Rage.
• Swedish Police labels 'crypto exchanges' as 'professional money launderers.' A report by the Swedish Police Authority classifies certain cryptocurrency exchanges and related services as 'professional money launderers (PMLs),' asserting that these platforms are frequently used by criminals to launder proceeds from various crimes.

"Measures targeting crypto exchange providers tend to have a greater impact than measures against criminals that solely conduct their own money laundering," was stated in the report.

• Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison sentenced to 24 months in prison. Despite Ellison's "remarkable" assistance to the government in the case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Judge Lewis Kaplan stated that this was still an "outrageous fraud."
• Fold and BitGo partnership. "Our new partnership with BitGo is a significant step toward offering you the currency you prefer with the banking features you need, all while offering added redundancy to improve custody," was stated in a blog post.

Use the tools

• Aqua Wallet v0.2.4 brings Ghost Transactions for sends and some receives, BTC Map integration, address history, and more.

• Alby Go has been officially released. The app is now available on iOS and Android via official app stores. It allows users to send and receive bitcoin instantly over the Lightning Network on their mobile devices, directly from their own nodes.
• Breez SDK Liquid v0.3.4 introduces lowball fees for direct Liquid transactions, support for 'send all funds' in pay_onchain, and updated default Electrum URLs.
  • Breez SDK Core (Greenlight) v0.6.1 updates Validating Lightning Signer (VLS) to v0.12.0.
• Kyoto v0.2.0 is out with support for a new silent payments feature-flag and other improvements for developers.
• nix-bitcoin v0.0.114 has been released with updates to CLN, Fulcrum, and HWI.
• StashPay Wallet is now available for testing. The latest version comes with ability to receive and send Lightning invoices (BOLT11) and recovery phrase backup and restore functionality.
• khatru is a framework for making Nostr relays. Check it out here.
• Mostro v0.12.5 brings privacy improvements for users, adds a token for disputes, improved documentation, and bug fixes.
  • Mostro-cli was also updated to version 0.10.3.
• Minestr is a multiplayer bitcoin mining simulator where nostr users can compete against each other for sats while learning about bitcoin and nostr and contributing to open-source software development.
• Citrea Public Testnet is now live on Bitcoin Testnet4.

Other stuff

• Bitcoin: A Global Liquidity Barometer is a research piece about the correlation between measures of liquidity and the price of bitcoin.
• Sideband is an extensible LXMF messaging client, situational awareness tracker and remote control and monitoring system for Android, Linux, macOS and Windows.
• Privacy Index is 'a guide of guides for all things digital privacy.'

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
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