Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, December 20th, 2024

What's new

• The Human Rights Foundation grants 7 BTC to 20 bitcoin projects. The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) announced that its Bitcoin Development Fund is granting a total of 7 BTC to 20 global projects. These grants support technical education in authoritarian regimes, independent media, decentralized mining, and private financial solutions for human rights groups, with a focus on Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
• Spiral has renewed its grant to BTCPay Server, a popular, free, and open-source Bitcoin payment processor that allows users to accept Bitcoin without extra fees or intermediaries.
• Roman Storm, founder of Tornado Cash, argues that the Fifth Circuit's order warrants dismissal. The developer has renewed his bid to dismiss money laundering and sanctions violation charges, citing a recent Fifth Circuit decision that found the company's smart contracts were not sanctionable property.
• Major transparency issues with blockchain surveillance firms. Investigative reporter L0la L33tz found that the address cited in Chainalysis's report on alleged Syrian rebels' crypto funding received a total of $807, while other participants had raised around $13,000 since November 27th via USDT. The report also incorrectly linked sanctioned Bitcoin addresses with Tron campaigns. Additionally, the sanctioned address had not transacted since August 2021, calling the report’s accuracy into question.

"If we want to have an honest discussion on terr*rist financing on bitcoin, blockchain surveillance firms need to be held to scientific standards and a minimum degree of transparency in their operations – otherwise, we run the risk of designing policy based on the claims of for-profit surveillance firms that can hardly be held accountable," added the reporter.

• Coin Center's top policy priorities for 2025. The non-profit focused on policy issues facing cryptocurrencies presented its agenda to protect developers and users of open blockchains next year. Top policy issues include:

1. Stop unjust prosecutions of non-custodial software developers.
2. Stop the misuse of sanctions laws to block Americans from domestic transactions.
3. Protect Americans holding their own crypto.
4. Sensible tax reform for American crypto users.
5. Equal tax treatment for block rewards.
6. Repeal and fix harmful crypto tax requirements.
7. Clarify securities and commodities law.

• Record outflows from US spot bitcoin ETFs. On Thursday, the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States experienced daily net outflows totaling $680 million, as the price of bitcoin fell below the $100,000 mark, reports The Block.
• Craig Wright has been handed a suspended one-year sentence in the UK for continuing to sue Bitcoin developers. The sentence is suspended for two years, meaning he will only serve time if he reoffends during that period. Justice Mellor also ordered Wright to drop his latest lawsuit against Square and Bitcoin developers. Additionally, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) has secured reimbursement for legal expenses totaling £145,000, or roughly $181,500.
• Mara buys 15,574 bitcoin using proceeds of 0% convertible notes. The company invested ~$1.53 billion at ~$98,529 per coin, and currently holds 44,394 BTC.
• El Salvador will continue buying bitcoin at accelerated pace, said Stacy Herbert of the country's Bitcoin Office, following the confusion of the country's agreement latest debt agreement with the IMF, which still needs to be approved by the IMF's Executive Board in early Feburuary of 2025.
  • Additionally, El Salvador added 11 more Bitcoin to its strategic Bitcoin reserves yesterday.

Use the tools

• The Bitcoin Dev Kit team has released BDK Wallet v1.0.0, the final version of the bdk_wallet 1.0.0 series. This update includes minor improvements to the wallet's transaction functions and enhancements to the next_unused_address API documentation.

"Please thank all the contributors who made this first major release possible and who's continued effort make the BDK project so awesome," was stated in the release notes.

• Onyx v0.0.1 beta is now available for Android and iOS. It is a free and open-source personal AI agent with voice capabilities, powered by Llama v3.2, that runs privately on a user's phone. Upcoming updates will include the implementation of a Bitcoin wallet and Nostr client functionality, as well as enhancements to the chat experience on Android.

• Fully Noded - Join Market v0.0.5 updates Tor to v0.4.8.13.
• Fully Noded - Server v0.0.3-beta is a hotfix release that addresses a bug when updating the network for Bitcoin Core, which could incorrectly update users' Join Market configuration.
• Fedimint v0.5.0 has been released. More details will be available once the release notes are published.
• Zeus wallet v0.9.4-beta1 is now available for testing. It updates LND to v0.18.4-beta for embedded node users, optimizes LND payment path calls after payments, adds several UI improvements, and more.
• Boltz Backend v3.9.0 features batch claim support for Chain Swaps, adds batch claiming on EVM-based chains, and includes many smaller fixes for CLN.
• THNDR Games added Blocks to its Clinch PvP wagering app. Blocks is a dynamic mashup of Tetris and Sudoku. Learn more about it here.
• Lightning Terminal v0.14.0-alpha ships the first non-experimental version of Taproot Asset Channels. It packages LND v0.18.4-beta, Taproot Assets Daemon v0.5.0-alpha, Loop v0.29.0-beta, Pool v0.6.5-beta and Faraday v0.2.13-alpha.
• OxChat Desktop v1.0.0-beta is the first desktop beta version for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Future updates include NIP-46 login support, optimized UI and UX, and performance improvements.
• The latest stacker.news release improves the reward system, implements NIP-46 Nostr login, and fails unresponsive wallets faster.
  • The project also announced it is set to make a switch to non-custodial wallets on January 3, 2025.
• Bitcoin Core v28.1 release candidate 2 is now available for testing.
• BTClock firmware v3.2.19 update adds support for Noderunners mining pool, Printer Go₿rrr pool, Public pool, and Satoshi Radio pool. Users must update it manually via a web flasher here.
• Cashu-ts v2.2 is an experimental canary release with a revamped build pipeline and new OutputData/Factory patterns. It needs some brave souls to test it.
• PKDNS v0.6.0, a DNS server resolving pkarr self-sovereign domains, comes with query rate limiting, simplified publish command, improved TTL caching, and more.

Other stuff

• The Financial Freedom report #54 by the Human Rights Foundation is now available.
• Bitcoin Optech #334: The seventh annual Bitcoin Optech Year-in-Review special summarizes notable developments in Bitcoin during all of 2024. It’s the sequel to our summaries from 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
• BTC Sessions made a tutorial on how to set up and use Bitcoin Keeper wallet with Tapsigners to create an inheritance plan.

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