Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, September 27th, 2024

GM. It is Friday, September 27th, 2024, and here's the latest, quite fat roundup of things that have gone down lately. Hammer time!

What's happening

• Bitcoin mining difficulty decreased by 4.60%, bringing the network's mining difficulty to 88.40T.

• Tornado Cash case against Roman Storm proceeds to trial. Judge Katherine Polk Failla denied Storm's motion to dismiss the charges, finding the Department of Justice's allegations credible. She noted that Tornado Cash operates similarly to other financial institutions and is not simply a charitable project due to its venture capital funding, the relayer feature, and the use of TORN tokens as evidence.

"The Court finds that the government has a substantial interest in promoting a secure financial system by combating money laundering, by combating the operation of unregistered money transmitting services and by combating the evasion of sanctions. These interests are wholly unrelated to the suppression of free expression, and the applicability of these laws to destroy conduct does not burden substantially more speech than necessary," the judge said.

• Swan Bitcoin sues former employees over plans to steal mining business. The company has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accusing former employees of stealing proprietary code, vendors, and business partners from Swan's Bitcoin mining monitoring software. The complaint alleges that these employees conspired to resign and form a competing company, Proton Management.
• U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs continue 6-day inflows streak. Yesterday's net inflows were led by Ark Invest and 21Shares' ARKB, with positive flows of $113.82 million. BlackRock's IBIT, the largest spot Bitcoin ETF by net assets, followed with $93.38 million in net inflows, and Fidelity's FBTC saw $74 million in inflows, reports The Block.

• OpenSats announces support for Jon Atack. As a BIPs editor and maintainer, Atack aims to ensure that important proposals, such as soft forks, are thoroughly reviewed to maintain Bitcoin's consensus rules and security.
  • Maelstrom, the family office of former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, has also awarded Jon Atack a one-year Bitcoin developer grant, making him the second recipient of Maelstrom's grant program supporting open-source Bitcoin developers.
• Brink released its annual report. The non-profit organization supporting Bitcoin developers has raised approximately $2.4M in 2023 from over 500 different donors. Brink’s expenses were approximately $1.6M.
• The Tor Project merges with Tails. Tails will be integrated into the Tor Project, leading to easier collaboration, improved sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to combat more digital threats.
• 'Inside the Biden Admin’s Plot to Destroy Silvergate and Debank Cryptocurrency Industry.' Nic Carter wrote an investigative piece detailing how the Biden administration and Sen. Elizabeth Warren incited the 2023 regional banking crisis, which ultimately took down Signature, Silicon Valley Bank, and First Republic, in an attempt to deliberately kill off crypto-friendly banks.
• Gary Gensler to rule on SEC licensing requirements for "Communication Protocols." SEC Chair Gary Gensler aims to decide on amendments to rule 3b-16 of the Exchange Act by November. Critics argue these broad amendments could force software publishers to obtain SEC licenses, writes The Rage.
• Dutch parliament passes law to ban cash payments above €3,000. The House of Representatives has voted in favor of a ban on cash payments for goods above €3000 euros. The measure does not apply to transactions between individuals.
• Hut 8 broadens its AI initiatives. The Bitcoin mining company revealed it has begun earning revenue from its new GPU-as-a-service product, hosted at a tier-three data center in Chicago. This service features several HPE Cray supercomputers equipped with 1,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs.
• Bitdeer completes testing of its next ASIC SEAL02. The company announced that verification and prototype tests with its foundry partner TSMC showed that SEAL02 achieved an efficiency of 13.5 J/TH in "low voltage and ultra power-saving mode."
• PayPal enables business U.S. business accounts to buy, hold, and sell bitcoin. "Business owners have increasingly expressed a desire for the same cryptocurrency capabilities available to consumers. We're excited to meet that demand by delivering this new offering, empowering them to engage with digital currencies effortlessly," was stated in the press release.
• Bridging Bitcoin conference in Belgrade, Serbia, is set to take place on October 16th. It will be the first Bitcoin-only conference in Serbia.

Use the tools

• Predyx Beta launched. You can test the Lightning-based prediction market here.
• Krux v24.09.0 introduces support for the WonderMV device, expands language options with Korean and Simplified Chinese translations, enhances performance across several key features, and addresses minor bugs for a smoother user experience.
  • Krux v24.09.1 addresses a fix for an upside-down camera on the Maix Cube devices.
• BitBox02 firmware v9.21.0 adds support for sending to silent payment (BIP-352) addresses, support for Taproot wallet policies and Miniscript on Taproot (MiniTapscript), and support for regtest.
• DLC Markets announced its successful transition to Bitcoin Mainnet. Check it out here.

• Boltz BTCPay Plugin launched. It allows any merchant using BTCPay Server (even on a shared BTCPay instance) to accept Lightning payments without running a Lightning node and transfer these funds to the Liquid sidechain using Liquid Swaps.
• Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.11 includes the option to verify addresses on Jade in the redeposit 2FA expired coins flow, a camera selector when scanning QR codes, and displays SPV status in the transaction details view.
  • Blockstream Green iOS v4.0.35 features hardware wallet address verification on expired 2FA reactivation, an improved QR code scanner, GDK v0.73.0, and more.
• Alby Hub v1.10.1 introduces a redesigned Connect Alby Account page and improvements to the channel backup format.
• ShockWallet v0.0.12-beta includes several fixes.
• Damus v1.10.1 introduces highlights (NIP-84), push notification support, profile edit safeguards, better friend filter for reducing spam, improved connect speed, support for Alby Hub zaps, and more.
• Whereostr v1.2.2, a geo-social app built on the Nostr protocol, introduces support for geotags extracted from image metadata, video uploads, map markers, and ability to open shared locations in Google Maps.
• Nostur TestFlight update brings the ability to create Nostr Nests from within the app.
• Nos v0.1.27 adds note preview, localized follow notifications, the ability to share notes links, and many more fixes and improvements.
• Route 96 is a NIP-96 / Blossom server in Rust built by Kieran. An active instance can be found here.
• Grain v0.1.2, an open-source Nostr relay implementation written in Go, brings a blacklist implementation, event purging, better resource controls, NIP-42 auth relay implementation, and more.

• Relay Wizard v0.3.0-alpha 1 adds support for WoT relay, and updates Khatru Pyramid and strfry versions.
• JeffG updated listr.lol, a nostr-based client for managing lists and curate content. "Please let me know if you see anything broken or odd," said the developer.
• Haven relay v0.2.2 includes the ability to pick between Badger and LMDB databases, an Nginx/Certbot Docker Compose file, and a few fixes.
• OpenVibe v1.3.4, a social app for browsing Nostr, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and other social platforms, introduces support for Mastodon and BlueSky lists and feeds, alongside design updates and bug fixes.
• Live Wallet v0.8.0 now makes the app buildable on Linux, improves dynamic styles, and adds a logout button.
• Version 0.4.3 of Fedimint protocol is out.
• Lipa Lightning library v0.64.0-beta has been released.
• Neutronpay has launched Payout Now service in Singapore, allowing businesses to seamlessly convert Lightning Payments to local currency.
• Strike introduced hide your balance feature. "Shake your phone to hide your balance, and shake again to reveal it," said the company.
• LuxOS is now fully integrated with Foreman mine management software.
• Libwally Core v1.3.1 has been released with several fixes and improvements.
• Tor Browser v13.5.5 is a minor desktop-only release containing primarily updated strings for users on legacy Windows and macOS.
• SimpleX Chat v6.0.5 adds support for generic SOCKS proxies, fixes calls stuck in the "connecting..." state, and more.

Other stuff

• NYDIG founder Ross Stevens presented his case on why Bitcoin is speech is therefore protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Read the full report here.
• BTCPay Server released a case study analyzing bitcoin payments during Riga Bitcoin Week. There were 2,998 Lightning Network transactions worth approximately €27,582.

• The second FROST Round Table occurred on September 18, 2024. Check out the overview and new developer tools here.
• Users wishing to run RoninDojo Bitcoin node on a PC should check out this comprehensive guide.

• What did we miss? DM us on Nostr.
• Do you want more? Subscribe and get No Bullshit GM report straight to your mailbox.