Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, November 11th, 2024

GM! Here are some of the latest news and updates that landed on our radar. Have a great and productive week.

What's new

• Bitcoin Fog user Roman Sterlingov gets 12.5 years for allegedly running it based on 'junk science.' Sterlingov was sentenced to 150 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $395 million and seized assets worth around $1.76 million on Friday. Additionally, he was ordered to forfeit 1,345 BTC from the Bitcoin Fog wallet, valued at over $103 million.
  • Sterlingov's case is branded as the case that "put cryptocurrency tracing on trial" as the prosecutors did not find any smoking-gun criminal evidence from his belongings or devices upon his arrest. Instead, the charges rely on a blend of blockchain tracing, IP address matching, and connections between online accounts, as outlined in the statement of facts released when charges were made public in April 2021.

• The Tor project issues update on IP spoofing attack. "Thanks to a joint effort from the Tor community, InterSecLab, and the support of Andrew Morris and the team at GreyNoise, the origin of these spoofed packets was identified and shut down on November 7th, 2024," stated the project.

"We want to reassure everyone that this incident had no effect on Tor users. While the attack had a limited impact on the Tor network - taking a few relays offline temporarily - it caused unnecessary stress and inconvenience for many relay operators who had to address these complaints. Although this attack targeted our community, IP spoofing attacks can happen with any online service."

• Joltz and Eulen to launch the first stablecoin on the Lightning Network using Taproot Assets. DePix will be Brazil's first Taproot-based stablecoin, bridging the Lightning Network with the country's PIX payment system.

• Galaxy Digital is pivoting from Bitcoin mining to AI. In its Q3 update, the company announced that it has signed a non-binding agreement with an unnamed U.S. hyperscaler firm to potentially convert its entire 800 MW power capacity to high-performance computing (HPC). Additionally, the company plans to terminate its colocation contract for 2.3 EH/s with Argo Blockchain.
• CEO of Canada-based cryptocurrency holding kidnapped and released after paying $1M (CAD) ransom. Dean Skurka, CEO of WonderFi, a publicly traded crypto holding company owning one of Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, was abducted during rush hour in Toronto and released unharmed after paying a ransom of 1 million Canadian dollars (approximately $720,660), according to CBC.
• Kenya: tourists to be exempted from declaring IMEI numbers upon arrival. The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) announced a directive on November 6 mandating that only tax-compliant devices can be sold and connected to Kenyan networks. Effective January 1, 2025, individuals importing mobile devices into Kenya, whether for sale, assembly, or personal use, must declare each device's International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number at customs. The agency has since clarified that tourists will be exempt from this measure.

"KRA has announced that tourists will NOT be required to declare their gadgets' IMEI numbers upon arrival. Kenya's strategic location as the gateway to East Africa positions it as a regional hub for tourism and business and must therefore remain easily accessible," said Tourism Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Miano on Friday.

• Plan ₿ Forum to take place in San Salvador on January 30-31, 2025. The two-day event at the Sheraton Presidente Hotel and the Museum of Art of El Salvador will feature keynotes, panels, workshops, an art gallery, and an exhibition floor for startups and sponsors. Early bird tickets are still available here.

Use the tools

• RoboSats v0.7.2-alpha lets users test Nostr global order books by enabling the option in the configuration tab. Currently, the feature is only available on the web, but it will be brought to the mobile app in upcoming releases. This version also improves robot recovery forms, changes "fast generate robot" to "fast generate order," adds coordinator Alias to the invoice description, and includes many smaller bug fixes.
• Bitcoin Keeper v1.2.18 enables the selection of Electrum servers during app setup instead of using a default one. It also adds support for TwentyTwo's Portal signing device and enables the USB option for Coldcard and Jade signers via the desktop app. The update also makes it easier to manage transactions, including a redesigned send experience and enhanced UTXO management with detailed transaction views.
  • Keeper Desktop v0.1.3 now supports Trezor Safe 5 and Ledger Stax and Flex hardware signers.
• Blockstream Green iOS v4.0.37 has added Jade upsells, updates GDK to v0.73.3, improves QR code scan visual feedback, and resolves several bugs.
• Clams Remote v2.4.0, a web interface for controlling one's Core Lightning node, added UI for BOLT12 Prism plugin, fixes BOLT12 validation issues, enhanced 'create offer' flow, and more.
• Ride The Lightning v0.15.3-beta a minor release with bug fixes and support for sending payments to AMP invoices on LND.
• LND Client is a Golang native wrapper for lnd's gRPC interface.
• Geyser.fund now supports the use of Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) wallets on Geyser projects.
• Fountain app v1.1.6 is now live on iOS and Android. It includes many bug fixes, new audio APIs, performance upgrades, and nested navigation.

• Cypher.space v0.99 beta, a self-hosted Wordpress and Shopify alternative for setting up a free bitcoin blog or webshop with value-for-value donation and checkout procedure tools, has implemented support for classified listings (NIP-99) and now allows creating and editing of listings and blog posts via the dashboard.
• Corny Chat v2024.10, an open-source audio space built on Jam that integrates Nostr and Lightning, adds the ability to edit user profiles, including kind 0 metadata, avatars, and banner images, and delivers a number of other bug fixes and improvements.
• Lume v24.11.8, a Nostr client for macOS and Windows 11, now uses NIP-22 for comments, adds Sync All via Negentropy to Settings, and improves notification messages and text visibility in Settings.
• Grain v0.2.0, an open-source Nostr relay implementation written in Go, brings a complete revamp of config management, backup relay integration, better blacklisting capabilities, timestamp-based event rejection, and bug fixes.
• Swap Market showcased a proof-of-concept of the 'Exchange in a Browser' idea, where users trade against open-source code hosted on GitHub Pages.
• Stacker.news added improvements to attached wallet logs, added Tor support for receiving with LNbits, and implemented many bug fixes.
• Nostraut is an app for automating one's activity on the Nostr protocol. Currently, it supports note scheduling, but future updates will include event notifications and automated reactions to events.

"Feedback and feature requests are greatly appreciated," said the developer.

Other stuff

• Xavier Fiechter wrote a blog post on extending BIP-21 labels with BIP-329 for improved address management.
• Breno Brito introduced the concept of Granola - a Cashu-based exchange.
• The latest issue of The Nostr Review is here. It is a biweekly newsletter focused on protocol statistics, updates, new programs, the long-form content ecosystem, and other key events happening in the Nostrverse.

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