Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, January 3rd, 2025

Good morning and happy Genesis Block Day, Bitcoin! Every day is a proof-of-keys day when you're into freedom tech.

What's new

• The EU kicks off 2025 with a remarkable shitshow of financial surveillance masquerading as security. Starting January 1, 2025, the EU's FATF Travel Rule requires Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to verify self-custodial wallets for transactions over €1,000. VASPs must also collect, store, and share beneficiary information, while the effectiveness of the Travel Rule in combating money laundering remains unclear. What is clear, though, is that the Travel Rule raises major safety concerns for bitcoin and other crypto asset users. From now on, highly sensitive user information is being shared not only with the customer's financial institution but also with all institutions they transact with, increasing the risk of hacks and identity theft, reports The Rage.
• Tangem fixes a bug exposing user private keys. Multicoin wallet provider Tangem has addressed a significant vulnerability in its mobile app that exposed users' private keys through support emails. The project estimates that the issue potentially affects less than 0.1% of its user base. Affected users are urged to update the app and move their funds out of potentially compromised wallets.

"When activating a wallet with a seed phrase—by generating or importing one—the private key was mistakenly logged in the mobile app's logs. These logs could later be accessed during interactions with our support team," the project acknowledged in a blog post.

• Do Kwon pleads not guilty to fraud following US extradition. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged Do Kwon, co-founder of Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developer of TerraUSD and Luna, with a nine-count indictment. The charges include securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
• FOLD announces $30M convertible note financing. The Bitcoin financial services company secured a $20 million convertible note financing from ATW Partners, with an optional $10 million available upon closing its business combination with FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp. The funds will accelerate its Bitcoin offerings and treasury development.
• Bitcoin miner HIVE Digital relocates to Texas. The firm is relocating its headquarters from Vancouver, Canada, to San Antonio, Texas, citing favorable Bitcoin mining regulations and better access to U.S. capital markets, according to The Miner Mag.
• Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference is set scheduled for August 28-29 in Hong Kong. Tickets and other related information are available here.

Use the tools

• Zeus v0.9.4 release includes improvements and new features such as an enhanced transaction user experience, display of keysend messages, CLNRest enhancements, and various optimizations.
• Bitcoin Keeper v1.3.2 brings a simplified collaborative wallet setup, supports alphanumeric PINs for the Portal signing device, and provides new technical support for concierge users, along with some UI updates and bug fixes.
• Bitcoin Safe v1.0.0rc2 is now available for testing. It comes with full support for all major hardware signers, including COLDCARD devices, Bitbox02, Blockstream Jade, Trezor, Foundation Passport, Keystone, Ledger, and Specter DIY.
• Leito shared a demo of Paid-blossom (Ratasker), a tool for charging for the upload and download of files using Blossom and Cashu.

"This will give incentives to people to save information and easily charge for it when people want it. This of torrents and the Internet Archive combined. File distribution with solid economic incentives," said the developer.

• NostrDVM v1.0.9, a framework for easily building and/or running Nostr NIP90 DVMs in Python, has been released. It introduces the DVMFramework class for handling the deletion of NIP-89 announcements on shutdown by default.
• The latest Yakihonne client updates include multilanguage support, starting with English and Chinese, adds support for translating notes and articles into the app's main language, and multiple bug fixes and improvements.
• GitCitadel, a project focused on Nostr Alexandria e-reader and publisher for NIP-62 Curated Publications, announced a milestone of printing "the entire Bible" using notes 30040/30041. These have been made available for users to peruse using a pre-release of its Nostr client. Learn more about it here.

• Olas v0.1.7.1 now works with remote signers, such as Amber (in nsecbunker mode), and brings further performance improvements along with multiple bug fixes.
• Noshtastic is a geo-specific virtual Nostr relay for Meshtastic. It is designed to operate as a standalone Nostr network, functioning independently of internet-based Nostr relays.

Other stuff

• The Bitcoin Policy Institute UK has released its 2024 year-end roundup.
• Utkarsh Phirke published quick explainer of RGB transactions, detailing how RGB utilizes Bitcoin UTXOs and explaining why transactions remain off-chain.
• Fudmottin shared a guide on how to run a Bitcoin full node with a Stratum server using a Raspberry Pi 5.

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