Good Morning, Bitcoin - Thursday, February 13th, 2025

GM. Do we have enough privacy for a functional society yet?

News

• Ex-operator of the BTC-e exchange to be released to Russia in a swap for a U.S. citizen. Alexander Vinnik, the former operator of the BTC-e exchange, is being released to Russia following a prison exchange arranged by President Donald Trump for an American teacher. Convicted in France for money laundering and sentenced to five years, Vinnik was held in Greece until 2022, when extradited to the U.S. for further charges.
• The MIT Bitcoin Expo 2025 is scheduled for April 5-6, 2025, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The 12th edition of the event will focus on how Bitcoin and freedom technologies can serve as tools for empowerment and economic sovereignty. Get your tickets here.

• Trump picks former Bitfury executive Jonathan Gould to lead the OCC. Previously, Gould was chief legal officer at Bitcoin technology firm Bitfury and previously served as senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which regulates and supervises the national banks and federal savings associations. 
• Brink renewed grants to eight Bitcoin Core engineers: Michael Ford, Gloria Zhao, Hennadii Stepanov, Sebastian Falbesoner, Niklas Gögge, Stéphan Vuylsteke, Fabian Jahr, and Marco De Leon.

"If you're curious about the work these engineers are doing, we have a detailed annual report in the works," said Mike Schmidt, co-founder and Executive Director at Brink.

• UK man who lost 8000 BTC in a landfill now wants to buy it. "I have discussed this option recently with investment partners and it is very much on the table," said James Howells, who has been pursuing the lost hard drive for over a decade. The local authorities are planning to close the landfill in the 2025-26 financial year.
• Kurl Technology Group increased bitcoin holdings to 610 BTC. The latest purchases were made at a weighted average price of $103,905 per bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses.
• The highway workers’ union of Wyoming to add bitcoin to its balance sheet. The Wyoming Highway Patrol Association (WHPA) has reportedly launched the "Get Off Zero" initiative in partnership with Proof of Workforce.

• Galoy launches Lana to power Bitcoin collateralize lending for community banks. Lana assists community and challenger banks, Galoy's primary focus, by enabling Bitcoin-secured loans for a diverse customer base. It integrates seamlessly with core banking systems, cryptocurrency custodians, and exchanges, ensuring compatibility with the existing banking ecosystem.
• Fold launched its bitcoin rewards credit card in partnership with Visa. Cardholders can access a suite of financial services through the Fold app, including zero-fee Bitcoin trades and exclusive bonuses from partner merchants. The app offers FDIC-insured transactional accounts and insured Bitcoin custody. Card rewards vary by Fold membership level.
• Bringin launched its Bringin debit card. The regulated offering enables users to convert bitcoin from a base chain or Lightning wallet to a virtual Visa debit card usable wherever Visa is accepted.

• LQWD plans to expand stablecoin capabilities following Tether's integration with Lightning Network. The Lightning infrastructure firm said the development is targeted to be completed by the end of the month or shortly thereafter.
• iOS v18.3.1 update fixes security flaw used in sophisticated attacks. Apple states that the update patches an actively exploited security flaw in the USB Restricted Mode feature, which requires periodic device unlocking to use USB data connections through the Lightning or USB-C port.
• Ghana Lightning Development Bootcamp is set to take place on April 9-12, 2025. Secure your spot for Ghana's first-ever Lightning developer bootcamp here.

Use the tools

• LND v0.18.5-beta is a minor release includes important bug fixes for AMP invoices, interactions with external software for normal invoices, fee bump transactions, performance improvements for Postgres backends, and UX improvements for custom channels.
• BlueWallet v7.1.0 added support for importing minikeys (e.g. Casascius coins, Satori coins) and includes fixes for ScanQR UI, signing exported PSBTs in COLDCARD, and more.
• Obscura VPN is now available on macOS. It is the first provably private VPN that cannot log your network activity by design and outsmarts network filters for enhanced censorship resistance.
• Bisq v1.9.19, a client for a secure, private and decentralized bitcoin P2P exchange network, is now available. This version now produces exclusively low-R signatures from wallet keys, adds a new option in PhoneNumberValidator to enforce exact number of digits, improves Russian translation and adds "Faster Payments System (SBP)" for Russian Ruble, implements BitcoinCoreSeedListDiscovery method, improves resync handling, and more.
• Blockstream Explorer API has been relaunched and is moving to open beta. It offers a scalable HTTP REST API for Bitcoin mainnet, testnet and the Liquid Network, with an Electrum JSON-RPC service coming soon. Built on the open-source Esplora technology, it now features simplified onboarding, enhanced infrastructure, and more robust support.

"Start harnessing the power of the new Blockstream Explorer today. Visit blockstream.info/explorer-api to apply for the open beta and gain instant access. With our free tier, which includes 30 days of free usage for testing, exploring the API is risk-free, empowering your projects without financial commitment," said the firm.

• Lightning Terminal v0.14.1-alpha is now available. This release packages LND v0.18.5-beta, Taproot Assets Daemon v0.5.1-alpha, Loop v0.29.0-beta, Pool v0.6.5-beta and Faraday v0.2.14-alpha.
  • Taproot Assets Daemon v0.5.1-alpha is the first update to the non-experimental version of Taproot Asset Channels, which comes with bug fixes for Taproot Assets Channels.
• bullishNWC v0.0.7 by The Bullish ₿itcoiner is a Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) wallet and a progressive web app (PWA) aimed at creating a simple, streamlined interface to manage multiple connections.
• UTXOracle, a free and open-source tool for decentralized bitcoin price discovery, is back with a v8 upgrade. It is a program you download and run on the same machine as your Bitcoin node. It connects only to your node, not external sources, to get the bitcoin price. The latest version now supports price estimation up to $500k and filters out non-financial transactions. A video for conceptual understanding of UTXOracle is available here.

• Blockstream Green iOS v4.1.6 updates the Green Development Kit (GDK) to v0.74.3, and improves support reporting.
• Aqua Wallet v0.2.9 delivers more layout fixes for small screen devices.
• Mempal v1.5.2, a mempool monitoring app for Android, adds a welcome screen with quick tips, as well as hashrate and difficulty adjustments to the dashboard.
• Multisigbackup.com provides an easy way for someone to encrypt and inscribe their k-of-n descriptor, so it can always be recovered with k seeds. All sensitive data (master fingerprints, xpubs) is stripped from the descriptor and encrypted so that it can’t be decrypted without k of the xpubs.
• Immortal v0.0.9, a scalable and high-performance Nostr relay, improves security with event ID validation and ensures gift wrap events are accessible only to intended recipients, enhancing reliability and safety.
• Algo Relay v0.1.5 uupdate lays the foundation for individual users to control their own algorithm without running a personal relay.
• Team Relay v0.2.0, a Nostr relay for teams, brings ability to offer Blossom server for teams, and utilizes faster database engines.
• RelayDiscovery.com is a Nostr relay that specializes in serving relay kind Nostr notes to make it easier for clients to implement the outbox model.

"The goal of this service is to make it easier for clients to implement the Outbox model by having a reliable relay to find any pubkey's relay settings. It pulls notes from many large relays and can be written to directly as well," said uxto the webmaster.

• Nostr0 is a web app for searching and visualizing Nostr events using npubs. Users can filter events by date and view details such as images, videos, and associated links.
• Coracle v0.6.0 is now available. This version adds support for kind-20 (Olas) image events, the implementation of Nstart for onboarding new users, and note scheduling via DVMs. Additionally, it comes with support for Tor/local relays.
• Roz is a notary implementation for Nostr events.
• Elements v23.2.6, an open source, sidechain-capable blockchain platform, providing access to features such as Confidential Transactions and Issued Assets, is now available.
• Tor Browser v14.5a3 is now available for testing.
• CalyxOS v6.4.0 rolls out Android 15 support for Google Pixel series from 6 to 9.
• GrapheneOS v2025021100 has been released with the latest fixes and improvements.

Other stuff

• Casa published a blog post on how to recognize and deal with social engineering scams.
• Kontext wrote an Open Source Culture Manifesto.
• PlanB Network shared an advanced COLDCARD Q tutorial.
• Btrust Builders made a blog post examining the progress and architecture of the dual-funded channel implementation in the Lightning Development Kit (LDK).
• Bitvocation published a Bitcoin Job Market update for January 2025.
• The latest edition of the Lightning Labs newsletter is now available, covering some of the latest developments of the Lightning network and companies building on Lightning.
• Bitcoin Design Newsletter #71 is here, delivering the latest events, notes, and updates for designers in Bitcoin.

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