Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, January 6th, 2025

Lots of goodies in this one, as there are many things to catch up on that might have been missed over the festive period. GM!

What's new

• U.S. Appeals court strikes down net neutrality rules. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC cannot regulate wireless and home broadband services under traditional communication service rules. The three-judge panel cited the Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned Chevron deference, which required courts to defer to regulatory agencies on ambiguous laws.
• FDIC releases unredacted letters urging banks to avoid Bitcoin activities. Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, shared unredacted versions of documents related to Operation Chokepoint 2.0, obtained through a court-ordered Freedom of Information Act request. The letters reveal that the FDIC repeatedly urged banks to suspend crypto-related services and activities pending further regulatory reviews.

"It took a Court order but you can now read them for yourself below. They show a coordinated effort to stop a wide variety of crypto activity — everything from basic BTC transactions to more complex offerings," said Grewal.

• The Syrian Center for Economic Research proposes transitional government to legislate Bitcoin and digitize the Lira. Contrary to some reports from 'crypto' media, the transitional government has not approved or considered this proposal and is unlikely to do so in the near future due to more pressing issues at hand, said Bamskki.

• Bitcoin miner MARA lends 16% of its BTC reserves to generate yield. The company has deployed 16% of its BTC holdings, totaling 7,377 BTC valued at nearly $730 million, to undisclosed third parties in short-term loans to generate a "modest single-digit yield."
  • The company also announced that it surpassed its December hash rate target of 50 EH/s and increased its overall holdings to 44,893 BTC, including the loans.
• JAN3 raises $5m to accelerate AQUA wallet development. The $5 million seed round was led by Fulgur Ventures, with participation from Grupo Salinas, Tether, Lightning Ventures, East Ventures, Plan B Fund, Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, and NYDIG. The firm also announced the establishment of its Bitcoin treasury, stating that it now holds 12 BTC, acquired at an average cost of $83,333 per coin.
• TimechainIndex.com is shutting down on January 10, 2025. It is a platform that monitors Bitcoin holdings across exchanges, funds, ETFs, and companies, providing real-time data and insights.

"This past year has been an incredible journey, and I am deeply grateful for your support and engagement. Whether you visited the site once or were a frequent user, I hope it made a difference for you in some way. Additionally, if the data from the website could be of use to anyone, it is available for sale. Please feel free to reach out to me through DM or at sani@timechainindex.com for inquiries," said the project's developer Sani.

• DivestOS shuts down following 10 years of development. DivestOS, a privacy and security-oriented mobile operating system that supports end-of-life devices, has announced its final update and the discontinuation of the open-source project.
  • Users looking for alternatives to DivestOS can explore options like GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, LineageOS, and some others.
• Mi Primer Bitcoin launched a community hub for independent Bitcoin educators. The project has launched a community hub that enables independent Bitcoin educators to begin teaching the open-source Bitcoin Diploma using various wikis It also facilitates connections among numerous educators involved in similar initiatives worldwide.
• The Cape Town Lightning Development Bootcamp set for January 20th - 23rd, 2025. Secure your spot here.

Use the tools

• Jade Plus is Blockstream's latest signing device, featuring a larger display, intuitive controls, a durable casing, an improved camera, air-gapped firmware upgrades, and hardware authentication.
• Specter Desktop v2.1.1, a desktop GUI for Bitcoin Core optimized to work with hardware wallets, is a Docker-only release. It makes Specter compatible with Bitcoin Core v28.0, supports wallet export to Jade via QR code, and delivers multiple fixes and improvements.
• Blockstream Green Android v4.1.1 implements a Jade genuine check, fixes the Jade BIP39 passphrase input timeout, updates dependencies, and includes several additional enhancements.
• Sentinel v5.1.1, a watch-only Bitcoin wallet tracker for managing multiple wallets and addresses, now allows users to fully spend a UTXO by tapping the available balance. It also enables scanning of BIP21 URIs, introduces a street mode to hide balances, and allows users to paste Dojo credentials with full JSON instead of just the API key and URL.
• Dojo Bay is a directory for available Dojo nodes, allowing users to select nodes based on their reputation and location for both Mainnet and Testnet.
• Live Wallet v1.0.0, a desktop app that helps users understand the current and future fee burden of their UTXOs, introduced the ability to analyze user transactions to check for potential privacy heuristics used by chain analytics companies to cluster wallets, as well as basic transaction output labeling.

• Fully Noded - Join Market v0.1.0 has been released on the App Store, bringing a notable upgrade to the Fidelity Bond UI/UX.
• Doppler v0.4.0, a tool for building and managing bitcoind/lightning clusters in regtest or signet environments, now allows an Esplora instance to be attached to any Bitcoind setup in a simulation Doppler file.
• COLDCARD EDGE v6.3.4, an experimental COLDCARD signing device firmware for developers, is a bugfix release that addresses a potentially serious policy deserialization bug affecting versions 6.2.2X, 6.3.3X, and 6.3.3QX.
• BLOCKCLOCK firmware v1.2.3 has been released. It includes some "mime fun" features on the display page for MINI owners, reports external IP addresses into the log live for network debugging, and includes several bug fixes.
• BitAxeSupra 403 brings minor improvements to the BitAxeSupra 402 single BM1368 miner.
• AxeOS v2.4.4 (ESP-miner) is now available. ESP Miner is an open-source ESP32 firmware for BitAxe devices. The latest version includes bug fixes, new features, and more customization options for theme colors.

• Frostnap v0.0.0-alpha1 firmware has been released.
• testnet4.info is a faucet for Bitcoin testnet4 coins, written in C# using ASP.Net Razor Pages and NBitcoin. The project's repository is available here.
• Clams Remote v2.5.4, a tool for controlling Core Lightning nodes via web-enabled devices, has been released.
• Onyx v0.1.0, a personal AI agent on mobile that responds to voice commands, adds a basic Bitcoin/Lightning wallet for sending, receiving, and backup/restore functionality via the Lightning/Liquid SDK by Breez.

"Treat as experimental. Please do not use with more than ~$1 of bitcoin," said the developer. The full list of caveats is available here.

• Amethyst v0.94.3 introduces encrypted media uploads for direct message (NIP-17 DMs) chats, enables multi-image or video uploads, adds a command to link custom emojis in new posts and chats, fixes a couple of Tor leaks, and implements iMeta tags for GIF URLs to optimize GIF previews.
• Primal Android v2.0.35 brings Highlights in Reads, Blossom support when rendering images in feeds, stability fixes, and more.
• Wavlake, a value-for-value music streaming platform that allows fans to directly support artists by sending micro-payments as music is consumed, has released its mobile app v1.1.2, which is now available on iOS and Android app stores.
• Mostro CLI v0.11.0, a command-line tool for interacting with the Mostro P2P exchange platform, includes a core update to v0.6.11, SQLite support, key management implementation, and direct message functionality.
  • A super early version of a mobile client for the Mostro P2P platform is available here.
• Nutshell v0.16.4, a Chaumian Ecash wallet and mint for Bitcoin Lightning based on the Cashu protocol, brings two new protocol spec updates: NUT-19: Cached Responses and NUT-20: Signature on Mint Quote. It also includes a new HTTP compression middleware and several bug fixes.
• Kanbanstr, a kanban board implementation built on the Nostr protocol, now supports zaps on cards.

• Zapstore v0.2.0 introduces the ability to sign in with NIP-55 (Amber), as well as Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) zaps along with zap receipts. Zap the devs!
• Granary v8.0 has been released. It allows users to convert Nostr content into formats such as Atom, HTML, RSS, and JSON. It also integrates with platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and IndieWeb through web and REST APIs.
• Algo relay v0.1.3, an algorithmic relay for Nostr, now saves every user's social graph, creates a fresh feed each time you refresh, and allows the purging of older notes to enable the algorithm to evolve faster.
• Web-of-Trust (WoT) relay v0.1.16 introduces a 'Retard List', allowing users to ignore follow lists of people who follow spammers.
• Nostr Spring Boot Starter v0.1.0 is a new tool for writing Nostr applications using Spring Boot.
• Bouquet is a web tool designed for syncing blobs between Blossom servers.
• CVS Importer is a Nostr uploader that facilitates the bulk publishing of events via CSV.
• Stacker.news is now non-custodial and prioritizes using 'cowboy credits' for users without attached external wallets. Learn more about the difference between reward sats and 'cowboy credits' here.
  • Stacker.news user supratic shared a collection of resources on how to connect a personal wallet to stacker.news.

Other stuff

• Jameson Lopp has published the Bitcoin 2024 Annual Review.
• Nostr weekly review #5 by Nomishka Dilshan is available here.
• PlebBook.com, a community resource for aspiring Bitcoin developers and builders, is looking for passionate individuals who would like to contribute to the project.
• Hashteroids is a browser-based game that combines elements of the classic Asteroid arcade gameplay with the concepts of Bitcoin mining.
• The Bitcoin Manual has written a guide on how to earn fees as a Boltz liquidity provider.

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