Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, October 21st, 2024

What's new

• ECB economists: Nocoiners may be impoverished by rising Bitcoin prices. European Central Bank Director General Ulrich Bindseil and Advisor Jürgen Schaaf published a new paper titled "The distributional consequences of Bitcoin." It claims that a prolonged increase in Bitcoin prices would lead to wealth effects favoring early holders at the expense of non-holders and latecomers.
• Saylor not concerned about bitcoin held with third-party custodians. In an interview on Markets with Madison, the chairman of MicroStrategy downplayed the risk of Bitcoin being seized and confiscated while being held with large regulated institutions.

"I think that when the Bitcoin is held by a bunch of crypto anarchists who aren't regulated entities, who don't acknowledge government, or don't acknowledge taxes, or don't acknowledge reporting requirements, that increases the risk of seizure," said Saylor.

• When asked about the concerns of confiscations akin to Executive Order 6102, he added:

"People say that, but mostly its paranoid crypto anarchists who say that, OK? It's a myth and a trope that goes on over and over again."

• You can watch the full 2 part interview here.

• SEC approves NYSE options on Spot Bitcoin ETFs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has given official approval for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to start options trading on Spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs).
• "Blockchain and Bloodshed." The Soufan Center has released a new intelligence brief titled "Blockchain and Bloodshed," which discusses the adoption of cryptocurrency by terrorist groups. The brief cites no sources, contains outdated, incorrect, debunked information and calls for stronger collaboration between counterterrorism officials, banks, and financial institutions, reports The Rage.
• LNHANCE.org website launched. The site showcases the LNhance soft fork proposal by Brandon Black and 4moonsettler. It aims to improve Bitcoin's scalability, privacy, and flexibility by introducing four new opcodes.
• TABConf 2024 is set to take place in Atlanta this week. The event will commence on October 23-26. You can find its schedule here, and satellite events are available here. The event is also accompanied by the ongoing PlebLab x ZBD TabConf Hackathon 2.

Use the tools

• DATUM Gateway v0.2-beta. OCEAN has open-sourced DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining) Gateway source code, Linux binaries, and a package for StartOS node runners.
• Core Lightning v24.08.2 has been released. "This point release addresses few crash fixes and includes an enhancement to remember and update channel hints for payments," said the developers.
• Joinstr App v0.1.1 for Android is here. The update includes UI improvements, the ability to select a wallet in settings, Riseup VPN implementation, and support for both testnet and mainnet, among other enhancements.
• Hodl Hodl discontinues support for most shitcoins as payment method. The P2P trading platform has removed support for most altcoins, stating that stablecoins and Bitcoin second-layer solutions remain fully supported.
• Debifi App v0.0.52, a self-custodial bitcoin-backed lending platform, delivers Coldcard MK4 integration for storing escrow keys, adds an explore page and contact form, along with several bug fixes.
• Alby Extension v3.9.2 removes the optional getRelays method for the Nostr provider and updates the product copy for adding new accounts to wallets. The extension now also ensures that the correct npub is displayed in the default view and includes copy improvements for the master key setup in the default view cards, enhancing the onboarding process for accounts that require a connected node.
• Foundation Passport firmware v2.3.5 is the latest bug fix release for issues introduced in v2.3.4.
• Phoenix wallet v2.4.1 fixes expiry failures for on-the-fly funding.
• phoenixd v0.4.2 now supports fee bumping for on-chain transactions and CSV exports.
• Shockwallet v0.0.15-beta adds some minor name service fixes.
• Breez Mobile v0.17.8-beta (Android) has been released with bug fixes.
• Boltz Client v2.1.10 includes support LNURL and LN Addresses when creating swaps along with some bug fixes.
• AlgoRelay has been released. It is the first Nostr native relay capable of serving personalized, algorithmic feeds without the use of external or proprietary APIs or DVMs.
• SIGit.io is an open-source and self-hostable solution for secure document signing and verification over Nostr.
• Martti Malmi released a new Iris version source code. "Now you can fix your favourite annoying bugs," said the developer.
• Amethyst v0.92.7 ships a fix for mute lists.
• Shopstr added NIP-17 DM support. "All messages sent over the site (payment delivery, order details, and inquiries) are now handled via gift-wrapped events with no metadata leakage," said the developers.

"NIP-04 DMs will still be shown for the next two weeks in order to give merchants time to claim their payments and finalize orders before they're removed completely."

• Nostr.build implemented Gift Wrapped DMs for OTP authentication and reminders. "If your client supports both (17 and 04 nips) you may see duplicates," said the developer.
• Amber v2.0.7 fixes -null in NIP-4 encryption.
• Elements v23.2.4 is now available for Liquid node runners. It includes some minor updates to the new discount Confidential Transaction fee policy for testnet.
• SimpleX Chat v6.1.1 brings additional error reporting and fixes for iOS devices.
• GrapheneOS v2024102000 is the latest release for an open-source, privacy and security-focused mobile operating system based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
• NUT-18: Cashu Payment Requests have been merged into the protocol spec. It introduces a standardized format for payment requests.
• Nirvati v0.1.0 has been released. It is a free and open-source self-hosting tool built on Kubernetes-based architecture with a strict permission system. You can check the project's roadmap here.

"Over the coming days, we plan to release images for Raspberry Pis, and publish many Bitcoin-related apps to our app store," said the project.

Other stuff

• Bitcoin Optech #325 looks at summaries of some of the topics discussed at a recent LN developer meeting.
• Craig Raw makes arguments for proposed Broadcast Pool feature in Bitcoin Core.
• PABLOF7z introduced Onion-routing for Nostr event publishing.

"This introduces insane privacy guarantees, someone can publish an event and not even the relay they are publishing from can now it's them, nor their IP address," said the developer.

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