Good Morning, Bitcoin - Tuesday, December 24th, 2025

Good morning and happy holidays! Here are some of the latest updates regarding Bitcoin and the wider freedom tech landscape.

What's new

• US Corporate Transparency Act injunction overturned by Fifth Circuit. The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) has been revitalized following an appeals court ruling that permits its enforcement during ongoing legal proceedings. Under this law, 32.5 million US small business owners must register with FinCEN by January 13 or face potential fines of up to $10,000.
• MicroStrategy buys additional 5,262 BTC for $561 million at an average price of $106,662 per coin. The company now holds a total of 444,262 coins, which are currently valued at over $40 billion, having spent approximately $27.7 billion on its purchases.
• Matador Technologies has announced a $4.5 million bitcoin purchase. The Canadian firm, focused on digitizing real-world assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, stated that it would adopt bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, starting with a $4.5 million purchase later this month.

• Russia has banned bitcoin mining for six years across 10 regions. The ban applies to territories including Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, and the disputed regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. This prohibition affects both mining pool activities and individual cryptocurrency mining.
• Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital is now heating 80,000 homes in Finland. The initiative, launched in June with a pilot program benefiting 11,000 households in the Satakunta area, has scaled up to serve an additional 67,000 residents. This system utilizes district heating technology to circulate heat via an underground network of pipes, transforming what was once waste into a valuable resource for the city, reports Atlas21.

• The MKP party in South Africa advocates for the establishment of a Bitcoin reserve. Nhlamulo Ndhlela, the party's spokesperson, urged the nation to explore the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve and to develop Bitcoin mining projects as essential components of its economic revitalization and diversification efforts.
• Bank of Italy categorizes no KYC peer-to-peer transactions as "crime-as-a-service." A recent paper from the Bank of Italy states that no-KYC peer-to-peer exchanges constitute "crime-as-a-service." One example mentioned in the report is the educational website kycnot.me, which lists P2P platforms and methods for users to transact securely without the risk of leaking sensitive personal information.
• $2.2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies have been stolen in 2024. According to blockchain surveillance firm Chainalysis, the USD amount of stolen funds increased by approximately 21.07% year-over-year (YoY), reaching $2.2 billion. Additionally, the total number of hacking incidents rose from 282 in 2023 to 303 in 2024. It is reported that North Korea is responsible for 61% of the cryptocurrency thefts this year.

• RGB and Lightning Network infrastructure developer ThunderStack has closed a funding round. The company received an undisclosed amount from various industry players, including Tether Investments, Fulgur Ventures, and Astroid Venture Studio. The funding will be used to enhance the infrastructure for RGB, a Bitcoin protocol that utilizes the Lightning Network, enabling the creation of contracts, stablecoins, and tokens while aiming to ensure high levels of privacy and security.

Use the tools

• BTCPay Server v2.0.5 has been released with minor improvements and bug fixes. "Most importantly, with the migration from 1.0 to 2.0 battle-tested, all users upgrading will now seamlessly transition to version 2.0," said the project.
• BitBanana v0.8.8, a native Android app for Lightning node operators, comes with multiple user experience optimizations.
• Zeus v0.9.4-beta2 is now available for testing. This version delivers speed up transaction UX improvements and bug fixes.
• Keycast by JeffG is a secure remote signing and permissions management tool for teams using the Nostr protocol.

• Blockstream Green iOS v4.1.1 updates the GDK to v0.74.0 and the Breez SDK to v0.6.6, and implements multilayout and video promotions.
• Coinos.io now supports both BOLT-12 sending and receiving functionalities.
• Rust-payjoin v0.22.0 has been tagged. In this version, the Payjoin V2 sender now serializes the reply_key, allowing it to resume after being persisted.
• The latest Zaprite updates include integration with Orqestra.io for automated USD-to-BTC conversions, updated Merchant X Checkouts to utilize an inline credit card form instead of a modal, enhanced LNURL error reporting, and a few smaller bug fixes.
• Braiins Toolbox v24.12 brings better user navigation and device discovery for easier use.
• knox is a command-line Nostr bunker with encrypted storage built using Deno.
• WoT relay v0.1.15 and Haven relay v1.0.3 have been released.

• Narr v0.3.2, a web-based RSS and Nostr long-form feed reader, fixes issues related to article updating, insufficiently rendered Markdown, and Nostr usernames not loading, among other improvements.
• Nowser v0.0.4 is the latest bug fix release for a secure Nostr key management and signing app available for iOS and Android.
• RGB Core v0.12-beta.4 has been tagged.
• Onyx v0.0.3, a personal AI agent that responds to voice commands and will feature Bitcoin wallet and Nostr client functionality, introduces a revamped UI, the ability to send voice chats to Onyx via Whisper, replaces local models with Llama 3.1 8B via the Groq API, and implements over-the-air updates.
• ZapPlanner allows users to schedule automatic recurring Lightning payments via Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC).
• The latest stacker.news release reduces the costs associated with establishing new territories to 50k sats/month and 500k sats/year. The platform is set to go non-custodial on January 3, 2025, so users are advised to connect external wallets to their profiles.

Other stuff

• Privacy advocate Naomi Brockwell has established the Ludlow Institute, an independent research and media organization dedicated to defending privacy and freedom in the digital age.
• Nostr Weekly Recap #3 by Nomishka Dilshan is available here.

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