Good Morning, Bitcoin - Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025

What's new

• Donald Trump signs 'a full and unconditional pardon' for Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. The President made the announcement on his Truth Social platform, adding that "the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me."

• US District Court rules against Tornado Cash sanctions. The U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas has ordered the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to remove addresses associated with Tornado Cash from its Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons (SDN) list, following an Appeals Court ruling that the Treasury Department exceeded its authority in sanctioning the crypto mixer.
• U.S. SEC launches a task force to develop a clear regulatory framework. The task force, led by Hester Peirce, aims to establish clear regulations, crypto company registration procedures, and an effective disclosure, reports Atlas21.
• Some of the latest corporate bitcoin purchases include:
  • MicroStrategy has acquired 11,000 BTC for $1.1 billion and now holds 461,000 coins acquired for ~$29.3 billion.
• Genius Group increased its bitcoin treasury to 420 BTC by purchasing an additional $5 million worth of bitcoin.
• Kurl Technology Group announced an $8 million bitcoin purchase, increasing its total holdings to 510 coins.
• Critical Metals Corp announced a BTC Treasury Strategy, stating that it plans to acquire up to $500m worth of bitcoin.
• Rumble has reportedly made its first bitcoin purchase as part of its $20 million bitcoin treasury strategy.
• Crypto.com relaunches its exchange in the United States. The move comes roughly 18 months after the company shut down the initial version of the US institutional exchange it was testing.
• Donald Trump doesn't know much about TRUMP memecoin. "I don't know much about it other than I launched it. I heard it was very successful. I haven't checked," he told a group of reporters on Tuesday.
• Revolut app is specifically banning GrapheneOS users. The Revolut banking app, which has been criticized by GrapheneOS for its poor quality, reportedly justifies the ban by claiming it is "serious about keeping your data secure."

"Revolut's app will stop working against once they start enforcing having a Play Integrity API result showing it's a Google certified device. This is not a security feature but rather anti-competitive behavior from Google deployed by apps like Revolut wanting to pretend they care about security," said the GrapheneOS developers.

Use the tools

• Bull Bitcoin expands to Europe. According to the service terms and conditions, it is now available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Previously supported countries include Canada, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

"We arrive in Europe with a brand-new platform, the culmination of nearly three years of rigorous development. This third version of Bull Bitcoin is designed to deliver a superior Bitcoin experience to European users, combining speed, security, efficiency, and unwavering commitment to sovereignty," said the project.

• Checkout the new platform at: app.bullbitcoin.com.
• Casa launched Casa Business, a self-custody solution for businesses involved with bitcoin and few other digital assets.
• BTCPay Server v2.0.6 includes a security fix for merchants using on-chain refunds and pull payments with automated payout processors, along with several bug fixes and improvements.
• Nix-bitcoin v0.0.118 is now out with the latest package updates.
• Blitz wallet v0.3.8-beta has been released with enhancements such as the removal of internal transfer payments, revamped contact payments, migration of the backend from Netlify to Firebase Functions, and other changes.

"Due to changes in app signing you might need to delete the previous version of the app before downloading this version. Make sure to have your seed phrase written down," was stated in the release notes.

• Damus v1.12 update introduces the rendering of GIFs and video files while composing posts, the ability to paste GIF images like JPEG or PNG files, along with some other UX improvements and bug fixes.
• Fountain v1.11.4 is now available on iOS and Android. The latest version brings Nostr connect improvements and various bug fixes.
• Nostrmo v2.9.5, a Flutter Nostr client for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web, and Linux, adds PC tray and PC notice support, support for some Linux packages, and more.
• Blossom Audit v0.2.0 is a simple CLI tool that lets users run pre-built audits against any Blossom server. It comes with NIP-46 remote signer support.

• PullThatUpJamie v0.1.1 by Cascadr is a podcast search tool designed to help users find specific moments in an expanding collection of shows.
• Validating Lightning Signer (VLS) v0.13.0-rc.1 is now available for testing.
• Hurricash by Super Testnet is "almost like a Coinpool except everyone has to exit with the same amount as everyone else."

Other stuff

• CoinMetrics published a reflection on the first year of Bitcoin ETFs.
• John Arnold disentangles facts from fiction when it comes to Bitcoin and quantum computing.
• Ripple Radios announced a new mesh protocol dubbed MeshCore.
• Lightning.news shared a review of the ParmanodL Bitcoin node.
• Check out this write-up on a '0-click deanonymization attack' targeting users of multiple major platforms via Cloudflare.

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