Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, December 30th, 2024

What's new

• Bitcoin mining difficulty has reached 109.78T. The network's hashrate has continued to grow recently and is currently around 779 exahashes per second (EH/s), based on a 7-day simple moving average.

• Industry groups are suing the IRS over the new KYC "Broker Rules" for "DeFi front-end services." The Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund, and Texas Blockchain Council aim to block the latest midnight rulemaking that requires "DeFi entities offering front-end services" to track and report customer information.

"The IRS and Treasury have gone beyond their statutory authority in expanding the definition of “broker” to include providers of DeFi trading front-ends even though they do not effectuate transactions. Not only is this an infringement on the privacy rights of individuals using decentralized technology, it would push this entire, burgeoning technology offshore," said Marisa Coppel, Head of Legal, Blockchain Association.

• The UN General Assembly has greenlit a cybercrime treaty despite widespread backlash. The UN General Assembly approved its cybercrime convention that may change how governments regulate the internet. Human rights activists, cybersecurity experts, and major tech companies have voiced their opposition, cautioning that the convention may be misused by authoritarian regimes and lead to numerous privacy violations.
  • Attempts to include human rights protections in the treaty failed during negotiations over the summer. The Cybercrime Convention will be signed in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2025, taking effect 90 days after the 40th ratification.
• EU-regulated exchange users must now verify their private wallets when making deposits and withdrawals exceeding €1,000 in value. As of December 30th, in compliance with the EU's MiCA and Travel Rule regulations, bitcoin deposits and withdrawals now require regulated service providers to verify ownership of "self-hosted" wallets for all transactions exceeding €1,000.
• The IRS's 'safe harbor' provision is another squeeze on Bitcoin and crypto holders. Under the 'safe harbor' provision, individuals must submit a detailed "snapshot" of their cryptocurrency holdings on a wallet-by-wallet cost basis by January 1, 2025.

"Put simply, the IRS wants to bring as many digital assets as possible into the taxed system and attach a cost-basis to every coin, token, or UTXO. If you can measure it, you can tax it. That's the aim," writes Yaël for The Rage.

• Enforcement of US Corporate Transparency Act blocked again following a court reversal. A Fifth Circuit panel reinstated a nationwide injunction against the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) just three days after another panel lifted it, causing additional confusion regarding compliance with the controversial law.

"In light of a recent federal court order, reporting companies are not currently required to file beneficial ownership information with FinCEN and are not subject to liability if they fail to do so while the order remains in force. However, reporting companies may continue to voluntarily submit beneficial ownership information reports," reads a statement on FinCEN's website.

• Do Kwon extradited to the U.S. Montenegro's Minister of Justice, Bojan Božović, has signed the order for the extradition of Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to the U.S. This follows the collapse of Kwon's algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD, and its sister cryptocurrency, Luna, in 2022, which resulted in billions of dollars in losses for investors. Consequently, authorities from South Korea, the U.S., and Interpol have been pursuing his arrest.
• MicroStrategy has acquired 2,138 BTC for ~$209 million at ~$97,837 per coin. The company now owns 446,400 BTC acquired for approximately $27.9 billion at about $62,428 per bitcoin.

Use the tools

• Bull Bitcoin Wallet v0.4.0 introduces send and receive functionality for serverless asynchronous Payjoin V2 (BIP-77) transactions. The implementation is backward compatible with Payjoin v1 implementations in apps like BlueWallet, Sparrow, BTCPay Server, and others.
• Stratum v2 Reference Implementation v1.2.0 release continues to "solidify low-level protocols, enhances the developer experience by adding a new integration test framework, and lays the foundation for big plans in 2025," said the developers.
• BP2 Central, an aggregator of bitcoin peer-to-peer buy and sell offers, now displays orders from Bisq.
• Next Block fee estimator is now available at nextblock.cypherpunktools.com. An onion version of the site is available here.
• Electrs v0.10.8, an efficient re-implementation of Electrum Server in Rust, is now available.
• Noflux is a lightweight RSS and Nostr long-form reader for desktop and personal servers.

• Olas v0.1.6, an Instagram-like client for Nostr, introduces speed improvements, search and mute functionalities, and an improved sharing UI.
• Nigiri v0.5.6, a "docker box for special Bitcoin cooking," has been released.

• Onyx v0.0.6 by OpenAgents delivers a new chat and recording UI and adds support for multiple GitHub tokens.
• Zeus v0.9.4-rc1 is now available for testing.
• Bitcoin Safe v1.0.0rc1 is now available for testing.
• ESP-miner v2.4.3b1 firmware is now available for testing.

Other stuff

• The 2-factor fingerprint unlock feature in GrapheneOS has been fully implemented and will be available in the upcoming GrapheneOS release. Learn more about it here.
• Satsie's Pocket Guide to Payjoin offers an overview of Payjoin for beginners.
• Bitvocation has released a 'permissionless career guide' for individuals looking to work on Bitcoin and freedom tech in 2025.

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