Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, October 18, 2024

GM. The GM report is never late, nor is it early; it arrives precisely when it is needed.

What's new

• Spiral renews grant to Will Clark. Clark is a Bitcoin Core contributor who focuses on issue and PR triage, contributing fixes, user support, PR reviews, and production of associated developer onboarding initiatives such as BitcoinCore Academy.
• Italy to hike bitcoin capital gains tax to 42%. The proposal accompanies the country's aim to generate 0.2% of its gross domestic product, translating to $4.35 billion by 2025. The new budget measures are still awaiting approval from the Italian parliament.
• Bitcoin is the 6th largest monetary asset in the world. Matthew Mezinskis of Porkopolis Economics shared the latest ranking of top monetary assets worldwide. More details are available here.

• FBI arrests SEC hacker who posted fake Bitcoin ETF approval. The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the arrest of a 25-year-old man for allegedly hacking the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account to falsely claim that the agency had approved bitcoin exchange-traded funds and causing "the price of Bitcoin to rise by $1,000 and then fall by $2,000."
• Chainalysis argues for dismissal of defamation suit. The black box surveillance firm has allegedly falsely classified a crypto project as 'the second largest crypto scam' in its 2023 Crypto Crime Report without any evidence of wrongdoing.

"Chainalysis has been trying to get this case thrown out since April. If the case is allowed to proceed today, it may finally bring some accountability to the world of black box blockchain surveillance," said L0la L33tz.

• New bitcoin sextortion scams use pictures of victims homes. Protos reports that fraudsters are increasingly using publicly available information, such as passwords, addresses, phone numbers, and social media accounts, along with other sensitive details from third-party data breaches, to appear legitimate. The latest scams even include Google Maps Street View pictures to trick victims into believing that scammers are outside their homes.
• Venmo and MoonPay integration for US users. Venmo customers can now use their account balance, a direct bank withdrawal, or debit card to fund bitcoin (and altcoin) purchases on MoonPay. This functionality is not available to MoonPay users in New York or Texas.
• US spot bitcoin ETFs drew in $470 million on Thursday. The 12 funds have accumulated over $1.85 billion in net inflows so far this week. BlackRock′s IBIT led the inflows with $309 million, bringing its total to $1.07 billion for the week, reports The Block.
• Bitcoin hashprice rebounds by 34% since all-time lows. The network's hashprice has recovered to $50/PH/s after nearly 60 days, driven by renewed bullish sentiment and a surge in network fees, reports TheMinerMag.

• Lugano Plan ₿ forum to take place on October 25-26. The key Bitcoin conference in Switzerland is back in the city of Lugano. Get your tickets here.

Use the tools

• ESP Miner v2.3.0, an open-source ESP32 firmware for Bitaxe devices, has been released with lots of bug fixes and improvements.
• Stratum v2 SRI v1.1.0 brings improvements to the protocol crates documentation, a streamlined release and contributing process, and more testing abilities.
• Electrum v4.5.6 release integrates testnet4, adds support for Trezor Safe 5 and Ledger Flex devices, and introduces the ability to export multisig wallets to COLDCARD over USB, alongside multiple bug fixes and improvements.
• Lightning Network+, a web app for collaboration among Lightning Network node operators, introduced Group Channel Opens feature. It allows a group of node operators to open multiple channels with a single Bitcoin transaction, resulting in massive savings. It works with LND nodes.

• StashPay, a Bitcoin wallet for freelancers and nomads, added send and receive functionality for Bitcoin on-chain payments, as well as Liquid on-chain sends. Get the latest TestFlight version here.
• Zaprite introduced cash payments to its virtual Point-of-Sale terminals and hosted Checkouts. Learn how to enable it here.
• LDK Node v0.4.0 adds support for sourcing chain and fee rate data from a Bitcoin Core RPC backend, as well as experimental support for the VSS remote storage backend, alongside numerous API improvements and bug fixes.
• LNbits v0.12.12 is the latest bug fix release for a free and open-source Lightning wallet and accounts system.
• NodeGuard v0.15.5, an open-source stack developed to simplify treasury operations for Lightning nodes, has been released.

• Cake Pay Web now supports Lightning network transactions for buying gift cards online.
• Btrust, a non-profit organization supporting Bitcoin open-source engineers in the Global South, launched its website.
• Fedi app v1.19.4 makes the support widget more accessible, adds support for Cashu melting, and integrates portable Nostr keys.
• Amethyst v0.92.6 delivers more UI fixes for Android 15.
• GrapheneOS v2024101701 is the third release of GrapheneOS based on Android 15, following the October 15th stable release of Android 15.

Other stuff

• IVPN published a privacy guide series for self-auditing your VPN. "It's a fairly technical series, but if you rely on a commercial VPN for privacy - no matter the provider - we recommend taking the time to work through these steps," said the firm. Check it out here.
• The Financial Freedom Report #45 by The Human Rights Foundation is here.
• Collin Harper wrote a comparison of OCEAN's DATUM and Stratum V2 protocols.
• roasbeef shared his LN Summit 2024 notes and summary with some commentary.

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