Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, November 8th, 2024

GM. The Nostr protocol celebrated its fourth anniversary yesterday since its first commit. Shoutout to everyone building on this free and open social media protocol for notes and other stuff.

What's new

• Roman Sterlingov's sentencing hearing to take place today. In March, Sterlingov was found guilty of money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and money transmission without a license. Prosecutors claim he ran the Bitcoin Fog mixer from 2011 to 2021 and are seeking a prison sentence of 20 to 30 years.

"Most of the evidence at trial was circumstantial and neither the Bitcoin Fog server, server logs, private keys or ledger were ever entered into evidence," states Sterlingov's defense in a sentencing memorandum submitted before the hearing.

• Out with regulation by enforcement, in with regulation by the President? L0la L33tz details why the forthcoming Trump administration may pursue 'regulated Bitcoin' with the Bank Secrecy Act (AML/KYC), and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (sanctions).
• IP Spoofing attack targeting Tor Relay operators. delroth writes that malicious attackers are exploiting networks without BCP38 filtering by sending spoofed TCP requests. This causes the source IP to be blacklisted and possibly shut down due to abuse complaints.
• U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs experienced record inflows, with the 12 available ETFs recording a combined daily net inflow of $1.38 billion on Thursday. BlackRock's IBIT led the way, attracting a record $1.1 billion in total inflows.
• Detroit to accept bitcoin payments for taxes and fees. By mid-2025, Detroit will become the largest U.S. city to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency payments. Residents will be able to pay taxes and fees via a platform managed by PayPal, according to an announcement by the local government. Currently, Colorado, Utah, and Louisiana accept Bitcoin for state payments, reports The Block.
• Block winds down TBD, scales back investments in Tidal. The company is reducing its investment in TIDAL, the music streaming service, and is also closing TBD, its Bitcoin-focused division developing 'Web5.' These changes allow Block to redirect resources towards Bitcoin mining and Bitkey, as stated in the Q3 shareholder letter.
• Blockstream launches new research center in Lugano. The center will fast-track product development on the Liquid and Lightning networks by partnering with local innovators and startups.

"To fuel innovation, we’re offering CHF 10,000 sponsorships for promising projects, with selected teams invited to Lugano to collaborate directly with our team," added the firm.

• NYDIG reportedly acquired Consensus Technology Group. Bitcoin infrastructure and financial services firm NYDIG has acquired bitcoin mining company Consensus Technology Group (CTG), reports Blockspace Media. The complete details of the acquisition are unclear, but CTG reportedly operates 120 MW with 5 EH/s under management.
• OP_NEXT Bitcoin scaling conference. The OP_NEXT Bitcoin scaling conference is set to take place tomorrow in Boston. The event's website and schedule are available here. The livestream from the presentation stage will be available here.

Use the tools

• RaspiBlitz v1.1.3 is optimized to run on plain Debian 12 Linux for Proxmox/VM and x86 systems. It also packages Public Pool for solo mining, Telegraf for Grafana monitoring, Tailscale for remote connections, the ability to connect Zeus to CLN via CLNrest, and various other fixes and improvements.
• BTCPay Server v2.0.2 is a security-critical upgrade for Nostr and Blink plugin users.

"Without it, an attacker with access to a pull payment could drain the Lightning wallet without limit," warn the developers.

• Blockstream Green Android v4.0.37 is a minor release fixing crashes.
• Boltz Client v2.2.0 adds support for paying to BOLT-12 invoices via submarine swaps and allows Chain swaps with any amount (within our min/max).
• Kyoto v0.5.0, a simple, memory-conservative, and private Bitcoin client for developers to build wallet applications, has been released.
• ncklr shared a Great Restored Script Interpreter. It is an experimental partial interpreter for the Great Script Restoration (GSR) by Rusty Russell, a proposal to re-enable and clean up Bitcoin script opcodes.
• 0xchat v1.4.0 improves the app's user experience, updates message and calling sounds, adds support for CashuB tokens in the wallet, ensures compatibility with Android 9, and enables support for 'kind 15' encrypted file messages.
• chachi.chat by verbiricha is a relay-based group chat (NIP-29) client for the web. It is designed to be mobile-friendly, bandwidth efficient and interoperable with all kinds of content. It's a work in progress, so there might be bugs and missing features.

• Mostro v0.12.8 is the latest point release for the Lightning Network peer-to-peer exchange platform on Nostr.
  • Mostro tools is a TypeScript library providing lower-level functionality tools for developing Mostro clients.
• Lume v24.11.6, a Nostr client for macOS and Windows 11, improves Nostr Connect and the notification column in Dark Mode.
• NostrDVM v0.9.9 tests the latest breaking NostrSDK (v0.36.0) changes.
• bullishNuts v0.2.49 adds flow for ecash redemption by scanning a QR code.

• Pokey v0.0.7-alpha, a 'pull-notification' client for Nostr events, delivers general performance improvements.
• SnapNostr is a simple and fun site for creating nice and clean pictures of Nostr notes.

• Geyser v0.13.0 (geyser.fund) introduces major enhancements for posts. Projects and campaigns can now choose from nine post types, send posts to followers by email, and link posts to goals and rewards. Additionally, all existing posts have been migrated to Markdown.
• Fedimint Observer has added a health indicator to help users understand their federation's health status.
• GrapheneOS v2024110700 is a November security patch level update for an open-source, privacy and security-focused mobile operating system based on the Android Open Source Project.
• Mullvad VPN will remove OpenVPN on January 15, 2026, to focus entirely on the WireGuard protocol.
• Lightspark's Spark protocol is seeking initial testers, although participation at the current stage is extremely limited.
• Bitcoin Well, a regulated Canadian bitcoin onramp, has integrated the ability to purchase bitcoin directly via the Lightning Network.
• The Strike app now shows Lightning payment preimages in transaction details, among few other things.

Other stuff

• "Analyzing Bitcoin Consensus: Risks in Protocol Upgrades" is a paper on Bitcoin consensus and the analysis of risks around protocol upgrades from a technical and economic perspective. The v1.0 PDF can be found here.
• The "ColliderScript: Covenants in Bitcoin via 160-bit Hash Collisions" paper introduces a method for enforcing covenants on Bitcoin outputs without requiring any changes to Bitcoin.
• Pietralberto Mazza from Ark Labs wrote a blog post on unlocking liquidity prior to shared output expiration.
• Lightning Network Limitations is a repository for exploring and documenting the technical limitations of the Lightning Network.

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