Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, October 25th, 2024

GM and happy Friday! While the fiat world thrives on distractions, here's your daily dose of traction to keep you moving forward.

What's happening

• FinCEN: Hezbollah does not use cryptocurrencies at scale to finance its operations. FinCEN has issued an alert to address Hezbollah financing within the US financial system. The alert reveals that the group prefers traditional financial methods such as bulk cash transfers and smuggling, rather than using cryptocurrencies, reports The Rage.
• Nayib Bukele donates 2 BTC to support construction of schools in Honduras. The National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) of El Salvador confirmed that the funds came from the Salvadoran President's personal wallet.

• Terawulf aims to raise $425M via convertible note offering. The company said it plans to use $115 million of the proceeds for share buybacks after "disciplined capital expenditures aimed at supporting organic growth in HPC/AI and evaluating strategic opportunities, such as potential site acquisitions," reports The Miner Mag.
• Another solo miner finds a block. Block 867188 has been solved by a solo miner with ~150 PH/s, said ckpooldev. The miner reaped 3.329 BTC (worth ~$222k) in rewards.
• Hackers may have drained $20M from a US gov linked wallet. Blockchain surveillance firm Arkham Intelligence announced that over $20 million worth of stablecoins and Ethereum from 9 separate seizure addresses linked to the Bitfinex hackers have been sent to suspicious addresses linked to a money laundering service.

• Pennsylvania passes a Bitcoin rights bill. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has passed HB-2481, which establishes a regulatory framework protecting the self-custody of bitcoin and bitcoin payments. The bill exempts bitcoin from additional taxes and affirms the right to run nodes. It received strong bipartisan support, passing with 176 votes in favor and 26 against. The bill now awaits approval from the Pennsylvania Senate and the signature of Governor Josh Shapiro to become law, reports BTC Times.
• Microsoft to consider bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. The company's SEC filing reveals a proposal for exploring Bitcoin as an inflation hedge at the next shareholder meeting. The board advises voting against it, citing existing considerations of the issue.

• STOKR raises $7.98 million to establish corporate bitcoin treasury. STOKR’s latest funding round, led by Fulgur Ventures, raised 100 BTC ($6.78 million) and €1.2 million in cash, totaling €7.4 million ($7.98 million). The company announced plans to expand its bitcoin treasury, following MicroStrategy’s approach.
  • The company also said it aims to launch bitcoin-based tokenized assets and develop infrastructure to streamline institutional tokenization using native bitcoin Layer 2 technologies like the Liquid Network.
• Dutch tax authority seeks feedback on draft bill for crypto firms to report user data. The country's tax authority seeks public feedback on its plans to mandate crypto firms to report clients' transaction data to comply with EU's rules. The draft bill is expected to be submitted to the House of Representatives in the second quarter of 2025.
• Adopting Bitcoin El Salvador 2024 to take place on November 15-16. Get your tickets here.

Use the tools

• Envoy v1.8.3 enables the Buy Bitcoin feature in 50 US states, improves Tor connection stability, and brings user interface enhancements.
• Nunchuk Android v1.9.53 and iOS v1.9.57 ship with a revamped home screen and user onboarding experience, allow users to clone a decoy wallet, and bring initial support for testnet4.
• Alby Hub v1.10.3 improves the backup and restore pages and fixes the migration function on Windows Desktop, as well as a bug where incoming funds from closed channels displayed twice the actual amount.
• Ginger wallet v2.0.13 brings multilanguage support and enhanced client-side round checks. Ginger wallet is a fork of Wasabi wallet with a hardcoded default coordinator that checks all inputs for blacklisted funds with a chain surveillance partner.
• zap.store v0.1.4 is out with curated app sets feature and performance and UX improvements.

• BullishNuts v0.2.2, a Cashu PWA wallet, brings several changes to the onboarding flow and styling.
• Voyage v0.16.0, a lightweight Nostr client for Android, introduces NIP-88 polls and a variety of styling improvements.
• BTCMap Android v0.8.0, an app for finding places to spend sats, now shows place comments, hides ATMs by default, and displays places offering delivery.
• Pokey v0.0.2-alpha, an app for Nostr-based "pull notifications" on Android, ships support for reactions, reposts, and integration with Amber.
• GDK v0.73.3 pre-release is here.
• L402 Middleware v0.1.0 for Rust is a new Rust library that makes it easy to implement Lightning Network paywalls and authentication using the L402 protocol.
• Mullvad VPN introduced Shadowsocks Obfuscation for WireGuard, aimed at helping users bypass firewalls and censorship. This new feature is available on the desktop and Android apps, and will come to iOS later.
• GrapheneOS released v2024102400 with a number of fixes and improvements.

Other stuff

• HRF's Financial Freedom Report #46 is here.
• Bitcoin Design Foundation published its Q3 2024 overview.
• JeffG posted a demo of White Noise - an upcoming MLS messaging app built on Nostr.

• Pol Avec shared a ~7min tutorial on how to built a production-ready AI tool with L402 paywall.
• freakoverseOG made a Web of Trust visualization tool for Nostr. Check it out here.

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