Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, October 11th, 2024

What's new

• 2140 Foundation launched to support open-source Bitcoin development. Co-founded by Bitcoin developers Josie Baker and Ruben Somsen, 2140 is on a mission is to onboard aspiring protocol contributors and provide protocol veterans with long-term stability. Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has provided an initial multi-year grant to bootstrap the non-profit's efforts.
• Bitmain launches the ANTMINER S21+ series. The Antminer S21+ Hyd. is said to deliver a hash rate of 319 TH/s and an efficiency of 15 J/TH. The S21+ model promises 216 TH/s with a power efficiency of 16.5 J/TH. Shipping is expected to begin in Q1/Q2 of 2025.

• Telegram wallet app now supports evidence collection. "Wallet will carefully review each law enforcement request and cooperate on a case-by-case basis to disclose information, in accordance with its internal policies and applicable laws. All communications and requests must be fully verified," states the project's updated FAQ page.
• Personal information of over 77,000 Fidelity Investment customers exposed. The breach reportedly occurred between August 17 and August 19. The company has yet to clarify what personal information was stolen, besides names and other personal identifiers. However, it added that "this incident did not involve any access to your Fidelity account(s)."
• US judge approves alternative victim notification for Bitfinex hack. A recent government filing indicates that Bitfinex might be the only entity entitled to restitution for the 2016 hack that led to the theft of around 120,000 BTC. US authorities managed to retrieve 94,643 BTC linked to the hack in February 2022.
  • In related news, federal prosecutors want Heather 'Razzlekhan' Morgan to spend 18 months in prison for her role in the hack.
• Irish police is 'holding onto' ~5500 BTC it can't access. Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has been unable to access the coins 'seized' from a drug dealer back in 2020. A 53-year-old who set up the wallets claims that a case containing seed phrases was lost following a break-in at his home, as well as a clear-out of the property following his arrest.

• Russia bans Discord. The country's internet watchdog, Roskomnadzor, announced that access to Discord was restricted "to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes, recruitment of citizens to commit them, sale of drugs, and in connection with the posting of illegal information."
• IRS sued for taxing block rewards again. Tezos staker Josh Jarrett has initiated a new lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, aiming to challenge the rule that token rewards are to be treated as income when earned. He is being assisted by Coin Center.

"Mining gold isn’t a taxable event, and mining a bitcoin is no different," argues the Washington D.C-based think tank.

• Bitcoin ++ ecash edition has started today. You can rewatch the talks and workshops here. The event has also been streamed on zap.stream.

Use the tools

• Phoenix Wallet v2.4.0 and Server v0.4.0 released. "There are some minor UI differences, but no functional change. The fee schedule is unchanged. This new protocol will allow for even more on-chain efficiency in the future, stay tuned," said the project.
• Simplicity is now available on Liquid Testnet. "On October 9th, we activated Simplicity on Liquid testnet. This is a massive milestone for the community and represents many years of development, marking the evolution of Simplicity from a research-driven experiment to a fully-fledged language with real-world usability," said Blockstream in a blog post.

"Over the next few weeks, we will release some supporting tooling and documentation to help people get started playing with Simfony and Simplicity," added the developers.

• Joltz partners with Blockstream. "You can now earn Bitcoin back on all successful referrals when you join the Blockstream Affiliate Program; payouts are distributed seamlessly over the Lightning Network," announced the company. You can become a Blockstream affiliate here.
• The first non-custodial Bitcoin off-ramp platform in Mexico. Swapido partnered with The Bitcoin Company to launch a solution that lets users sell their BTC over the Lightning Network and receive pesos directly in Mexican bank accounts. The service is available worldwide, with the exception of the US and sanctioned countries.
• Peach Bitcoin App v0.5.0 (255) includes a fix for devices running Android 14 that were unable to open the share dialog.
• Utreexo v0.2.0 is the latest release for a hash based dynamic accumulator based on a Merkle forest.
• MicroBolt v2.0, a DIY Bitcoin and Lightning node for all kind of computers, is out. It includes new features such as a firewall and reverse proxy, a mempool Bitcoin explorer, a Nostr relay and web app, and more.
  • Check out all the latest additions here or get started with your own node here.
• YOPAKI iOS app has been launched. It is a beginner-friendly, non-custodial Bitcoin wallet powered by Breez SDK. It offers new users automated channel management, resources to learn about Bitcoin (powered by Jippi), and the ability to earn free sats by playing the Mexican game, Lotería.

• ShockWallet v0.0.14-beta now incorporates NIP-68 and includes several miscellaneous fixes.
• An API for creating BIP-353 usernames, Twelve Cash v1.0.1-beta is out, offering users the ability to pay for their own username along with a few other changes.
• StashPay, a Bitcoin wallet designed for freelancers and nomads, launched its website. Users can download the latest iOS TestFlight version there.
• Bitcoin Inquisition v28.0, a fork of Bitcoin Core v28, is now available. It includes 'heretical activation' of BIP-118 (ANYPREVOUT), BIP-119 (CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY), and BIN-24-1 (BIP 347, OP_CAT). Additionally, it packages an 'evalscript' subcommand for bitcoin-util that can be used to test script opcodes.
• Version 0.73.2 of GDK is out, with Python wheels for Linux and Mac platforms now published to PyPI. Future releases will support other platforms.
• Voyage v0.15.0 comes with NIP-22 comment support and some UI improvements.
• Tails v6.8.1 is an emergency release to fix a critical security vulnerability in Tor Browser.
  • Firefox and Tor Browser users are highly encouraged update to the latest versions.

Other stuff

• The Financial Freedom Report #44 by The Human Rights Foundation is here.
• Decoding Bitcoin provides a free and open-source, interactive, and exercise-first approach to learn Bitcoin development.
• If you're interested in learning how to use the Portal hardware wallet with Nunchuk, you can check this quick tutorial here.
• Bitcoin PIPEs: Covenants and ZKPs on the Bitcoin Without Soft Fork paper explores Bitcoin scaling with zero-knowledge proofs.
• Bitcoin Optech #324 delivers an overview of the latest disclosed vulnerabilities affecting btcd and Bitcoin Core clients before v25.
  • It also includes a comprehensive guide for wallets employing Bitcoin Core v28 policies, written by Gregory Sanders.

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