Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, November 20th, 2024

Good morning. Here’s your daily roundup for Wednesday, November 20th, 2024.

What's new

• Lawmakers urge FinCEN to finalize reporting requirements for cryptocurrency mixers. Seven Congress members have sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury to address Tornado Cash risks and prompt FinCEN to finalize crypto mixer regulations. FinCEN’s 2023 proposal seeks to regulate mixers under the Patriot Act, requiring financial institutions to maintain detailed records of cryptocurrency transactions, including amounts, mixers used, wallet addresses, transaction hashes, dates, IPs, timestamps, and activity descriptions, reports The Rage.
• Jason Lowery seeks an advisory role in the White House. The U.S. Space Force major and author of "Softwar" took to X to announce his application to serve as a military advisor on the National Security Council and/or the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy.

"My goal is to advise the Department of Defense on the national strategic significance of Proof-of-Work (PoW) technology and provide senior leaders with policy recommendations related to a strategic Bitcoin stockpile and the U.S. Hash Force," Lowery reportedly said on X in a now deleted post.

• MicroStrategy is now a top 100 U.S. public company by market cap. In 2024, the company's shares surged over 500% year-to-date and outperformed NVIDIA over five years, gaining 2,739% versus NVDA’s 2,688%. This growth occurred despite MSTR adopting Bitcoin as a treasury asset only in August 2020, while Bitcoin itself increased over 100% in the same period.
  • In related news, MicroStrategy's chairman Michael Saylor is going to pitch Bitcoin to the board of directors at Microsoft Corporation. He's also offering Bitcoin strategy advice to Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski.

• Cosmos Health adds bitcoin to its treasury. A Chicago-based global healthcare group issued a press release stating that "it has adopted a strategy to include Bitcoin and Ethereum as part of its treasury reserve assets."
• Russia to ban bitcoin mining in several regions, including occupied territories of Ukraine. Authorities in Russia announced plans to restrict Bitcoin mining in regions like Irkutsk, Buryatia, Zabaikalsky, six North Caucasus areas (including Chechnya and Dagestan), and occupied Ukrainian regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson) to address winter electricity shortages. Russia legalized bitcoin and other digital asset mining in July, effective November 1, but now it is planning to ban it just 18 days later.
• Russia to ban Bitcoin mining in several regions, including occupied territories of Ukraine. Authorities in Russia announced plans to restrict Bitcoin mining in regions like Irkutsk, Buryatia, Zabaikalsky, six North Caucasus areas (including Chechnya and Dagestan), and occupied Ukrainian regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson) to address winter electricity shortages. Russia legalized Bitcoin and other digital asset mining in July, effective November 1, but now plans to ban it just 18 days later.
  • The country's authorities are also considering taxing personal income from Bitcoin and other digital currencies at a 15% rate.
• Leaked 'GrayKey' documents show what phones it can unlock. According to 404 Media report, GrayKey, a phone unlocking and forensic tool used by law enforcement globally, can only retrieve partial data from iPhones running the recently released iOS 18 or iOS 18.0.1 as of October 2024. Its effectiveness with Android devices is inconsistent due to the wide variety of manufacturers.
  • Specifically, for Google's Pixel phones, including the Pixel 9 released in August, GrayKey can only extract partial data when the device is in an After First Unlock (AFU) state—meaning the phone has been unlocked at least once since it was powered on.

Use the tools

• Krux v24.11.1 introduces a fix for more robust encrypted backups. It affects users who have changed their settings to use AES-CBC encryption instead of the default AES-ECB for encrypted backups on flash storage, SD cards, or encrypted QR codes.

"Due to an implementation error, the camera-captured entropy was not being used as intended in our AES-CBC encryption mode. This means that the additional layer of security provided by the camera's randomness was not effectively applied," said the developers.

• PABLOF7z released v0.1.3.2 of Olas, an Instagram-like Nostr client for Android (available on Zapstore) and iOS (TestFlight). The latest updates include bug fixes, NIP-46 remote signer support, dark mode, improved image quality (and likely some new bugs).

• hodlbod introduced Flotilla v0.1, a new Nostr client for communities. You can try it on the web, and the Android app is also available on zapstore.
• Boardwalk Cash v.0.4.0, a Cashu wallet designed for fast, easy onboarding and use, has been released.
• Bitkey app v2024.73.0 now lists Coinbase offers alongside other partner exchanges when selling bitcoin.
• Boltz Client v2.2.1 patch includes two fixes for the WalletSend RPC.
• Utreexo v0.2.2 is now available.
• Wavlake introduced the ability for artists to promote their music in the Listen To Earn section.

• The latest Damus update is now available to Damus Purple subscribers. It brings the Damus Share feature and addresses some UX issues.
• Mullvad Browser v14.0 has been released. It is based on Firefox ESR 128 and incorporates a year's worth of changes from Firefox. It also brings back Firefox Screenshots, and enables Picture-in-Picture mode.

Other stuff

• The Bitcoin Dev Project wrote a guide on how to sign a transaction using MuSig.
• Atlas21 published a Bitcoin full node guide.
• The Tor Project shared a blog post about memory quota tracking, a new feature introduced in Arti v1.3.0. It allows users to limit the amount of memory that other people can cause their Arti instance to use, improving Onion Service DoS resistance.

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