Good Morning, Bitcoin - Friday, January 10th, 2025

What's new

• UK judge dismisses $770M bitcoin landfill hard drive case. A UK judge has dismissed James Howells' legal case to recover a hard drive containing 8,000 BTC mined in 2009 from a landfill. Howells accidentally discarded the hard drive in 2013 when bitcoin was trading at only $13. The judge noted that there was no realistic chance of success and upheld the council's claim that it owned the hard drive, ruling that Howells was not entitled to attempt its retrieval.
• Russia is liquidating 1,032 BTC confiscated in a corruption case. The country's authorities have begun liquidating 1,032.1 BTC confiscated from Marat Tambiev, a former chief investigator for the Russian Investigative Committee, with Moscow initially selling nearly $10 million worth of BTC, reports Atlas21. Tambiev, a chief investigator in Moscow, was convicted of accepting a bitcoin bribe from the Infraud hacker group and aiding them in hiding $137 million in cryptocurrency.
• Cypherpunk Nick Szabo joins Jan3 as Chief Scientist. "As Chief Scientist, Nick Szabo will spearhead our research initiatives to advance JAN3's mission of Accelerating Hyperbitcoinization. Nick will explore Bitcoin's implications on topics ranging from monetary policy to international trade, and financial sovereignty," the company announced in a blog post.
• Alpen Labs announces $8.5M strategic round to launch Strata. Strata is a programmable layer designed to maintain parity with bitcoin. The round was co-led by DBA and Cyber Fund.

• The Bitcoin Students Network launches Layer Zero program. The program provides students with a hands-on, all-expenses-paid 2.5-month experience, pairing them with entrepreneurs and builders in global communities. Participants will actively contribute to shaping the future of Bitcoin while promoting financial inclusion and economic empowerment.
  • Applications are now open for the Layer Zero program. You can apply here before the deadline on February 15.
• African Bitcoiners partners with Citrusrate. African Bitcoiners has announced a partnership with Citrusrate, aimed at bringing its Bitcoin for Beginners course to more people across Africa, empowering local communities with the tools for financial freedom.
• The 5th Bitcoin Educators Unconference by Mi Primer Bitcoin will take place on April 10th in Bitcoin Park, Nashville. More details are coming soon.

Use the tools

• Bitcoin Core v28.1 is now available. This maintenance release includes various bug fixes, performance improvements, and updated translations.
• Coinswap v0.1.0 is now live on Testnet4. It is a decentralized atomic swap protocol that facilitates trustless swaps of Bitcoin UTXOs through a decentralized, Sybil-resistant marketplace. This release represents a major milestone, featuring a fully functional implementation of the protocol, along with essential tools and documentation tailored for developers, testers, and early adopters.

"Calling all protocol developers and privacy researchers to test the apps, dig into the code, break it, spam it, and report bugs," said the developers.

• Tails v6.11 fixes several critical security vulnerabilities identified during an external audit by Radical Open Security. Users are urged to update to the latest version as soon as possible.
• MyNode v0.3.32 adds NVMe support to the clone tool, disables UAS for Raspberry Pi 5 compatibility, and resolves issues with JAM and LNDg compatibility.
• Fully Noded - Bitcoin Core v1.1.3, an iOS app designed to simplify wallet usage via Bitcoin Core, adds a deep link for connecting to the Fully Noded Server locally, without sharing any sensitive information in the link.
• Boltz Web App v1.6.1 ships a redesigned refund page, fixes browser language detection, and several improvements for Boltz Pro.
• Voyage v0.17.2, a lightweight Nostr client for Android, now enforces NIP-22 usage for replies with 6 or fewer characters and uses v2 replies by default for all new installations.
• Nostrss v1.1.0, a program that provides a lightweight and flexible bridge between RSS feeds and the Nostr protocol, comes with dependency updates and makes the feed cache optional.
• Nostrcheck server v0.6.0, a comprehensive solution for managing and offering services within the Nostr ecosystem with a focus on data sovereignty, is now available.

"This release is packed with major upgrades and brand-new features designed to make the server smoother, more powerful, and more customizable than ever before," announced Quentin.

• ESP-Miner v2.5.0b1 (BitaxeOS) is now available for testing.
• Blockstream Green Android v4.1.3 pre-release includes various bug fixes and dependency updates.
• Mullvad VPN v2025.2 for desktop enables quantum-resistant WireGuard tunnels by default on Windows, making it the default setting for all desktop releases.

Other stuff

• Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #336 outlines a potential change to Bitcoin Core that could impact miners. It summarizes discussions on creating contract-level relative timelocks and discusses a proposal for an LN-Symmetry variant with optional penalties.
• Nadav Ivgi has written a delegated vault proof-of-concept using CTV, CSFS, PAIRCOMMIT, and IK.
• The Bitcoin Course by Anil is a free, educational 2-hour course designed for Bitcoin beginners.

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