Good Morning, Bitcoin - Monday, March 24th, 2025

Headlines

• Tornado Cash sanctions officially lifted. The U.S. Department of Treasury has removed sanctions against Tornado Cash from its global blacklist, following a federal appeals court ruling that overturned the previous sanctions. Despite this, Roman Storm, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, still faces a criminal trial in July for his role in the project's development.

"We remain deeply concerned about the significant state-sponsored hacking and money laundering campaign aimed at stealing, acquiring, and deploying digital assets for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Kim regime," the Treasury Department said in a press release.

• HRF sponsored CISA Research Paper is now available. Cross-Input Signature Aggregation (CISA) is a proposed enhancement to the Bitcoin protocol aimed at aggregating multiple Schnorr signatures from different inputs within a single transaction or across multiple transactions into a single, smaller signature. This change could reduce the size of Bitcoin transactions, resulting in potential cost savings on fees, as well as improvements in bandwidth efficiency and storage.
  • Read the full report here.
• First block via self-hosted instance of Public Pool mined. Block 888989 was mined by a miner self-hosting a Public Pool instance on Umbrel node. It was a second block mined by a solo miner last week, as block 888737 was found by a miner with a self-hosted FutureBit Apollo.

• The IMF updates global balance of payments standards to include bitcoin and digital assets. In the newly released Balance of Payments Manual, Seventh Edition (BPM7), Bitcoin and similar digital curriences are classified as "non-produced nonfinancial assets", while certain tokens are treated similarly to equity holdings. This update represents the first instance of the IMF incorporating detailed guidance for digital assets into its global statistical standards.

"Crypto assets without a counterpart liability designed to act as a
medium of exchange (e.g., Bitcoin) are treated as nonproduced nonfinancial assets and recorded separately in the capital account; those with a corresponding liability are treated as financial assets," reads the document.

• Pakistan is exploring ways to use surplus electricity for Bitcoin mining. At the inaugural meeting of the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC), participants discussed the idea of using Pakistan's surplus electricity for Bitcoin mining, which could transform the country's liabilities into assets. Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb commended this vision and highlighted the crucial role of the council in shaping Pakistan's future in the digital asset sector.
• Strategy has exceeded 500,000 BTC holdings with its latest purchase of 6,911 BTC for around $584.1 million in cash, at an average price of $84,529 per bitcoin. This brings its total to 506,137 BTC, valued at over $44 billion.
• IRS to share tax data with ICE, DHS for deportations. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have reached an agreement permitting both the immigration agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to access confidential tax records to execute deportation orders, reports The Rage.
• France rejects encryption backdoor mandate. The French National Assembly rejected an 'anti-drug legislation' proposal to weaken end-to-end encryption, despite pressure from the Interior Ministry. This proposal would have required messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp to allow hidden access to private talks, posing significant security risks.
• X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest. Suspensions followed extensive protests triggered by the arrest of Turkish President Erdoğan's main political rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was arrested shortly before being nominated as the presidential candidate for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
• Garantex operators reportedly move user funds to a new trading platform. According to chain surveillance firm Global Ledger, the operators of the sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange Garantex have launched a new trading platform called Grinex, which is also based in Russia. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice froze several domains linked to Garantex, and the platform's operator, Aleksej Besciokov, was arrested in India.
• Coinbase was primary target of recent GitHub Actions breaches. Researchers have identified Coinbase as the main target in a recent GitHub Actions supply chain attack that breached secrets in hundreds of repositories, reports Bleeping Computer.
• Vinteum announces a fellowship program, which includes a six-month structured onboarding phase for new open-source contributors following the Bitcoin Dev Launchpad (BDL). The fellowship participants include @luisschwab (BDK), João Leal (Floresta), Lucas Balieiro (PlebLottery), qlrd (Krux/Floresta), @iamflops (Rust-Bitcoin), Moises Pompilio (LDK), and @luca_d70 (Floresta).
• The Bitcoin FilmFest 2025 will be held on May 22-25 in Warsaw, Poland. It explores the intersection of independent cinema, sound money, and culture. Get your tickets here.

Use the tools

• Robosats v0.7.5-alpha has been released, addressing liquidity attacks that were executed on Robosats order books.

"Some users continuously took orders without confirming to keep them hidden from the public book. After coordinators apply this version, the attack will no longer be possible," said the developers.

• Fulcrum v1.12.0 adds UPnP support for automatic port mapping in NAT firewall setups. It also provides mempool-related performance improvements and enhancements in internal code quality.
• ZEUS v0.10.1-beta1 is now available for testing, featuring the latest fixes and improvements.
• Phoenixd v0.5.1 (Server) now uses Ubuntu for the Docker runtime image and adds a parent_id link to the first outgoing part of payments.
• Bull Bitcoin wallet v0.4.4 ensures the correct use of pricer endpoints.
• Lightning Loop v0.29.1-beta is now available. It is a non-custodial service offered by Lightning Labs that makes it easy to move bitcoin into and out of the Lightning Network.
• Mostro Chat a minimalist peer-to-peer chat application in Rust, using the Nostr protocol for decentralized and secure communication. It allows users to share a key with an external observer, allowing it to be used for dispute resolution on the Mostro protocol.

• Blink wallet v2.2.300 pre-release comes with some minor changes and bug fixes.
• Nunchuk Android v1.9.65 and iOS v1.9.74 feature the latest bug fixes and improvements.
• Liana wallet v10.0rc1 is now available for testing. It introduces new features like backup and third-party key fetching during installation, without any breaking changes in the database schema.
• Green Development Kit (GDK) v0.75.0 enables discounted fees for Liquid on all networks by default, supports BIP-86 P2TR (Taproot) wallets, and adds an AWS Lambda Docker build image with a Python wheel for Python 3.10 Lambda containers.
• bip370.org is a PSBTv2 explorer for modern workflows, capable of parsing, converting, and inspecting partially signed bitcoin transactions, supporting various PSBT versions, encodings, and role flags.
• The NerdOCTAXEγ (Gamma) is an 8-ASIC version of the NerdQAxe++, utilizing Nerdminer/Nerdaxe Display with BitAxe Firmware. It operates independently, using 8 BM1370 ASICs to produce a hashrate of approximately 9.5-10.5 Th/s. It consumes about 160 Watts plus PSU, with total power measured at approximately 175 Watts using a Meanwell PSU.

• Swiss Bitcoin Pay v2.4.0 has implemented proof of funds.
• Plebeian.market is migrating from NIP-15 to NIP-99 for increased user freedom and better interoperability between Nostr marketplaces.
• Bitkey App v2025.1.1 includes the latest bug fixes and improvements, building on the recently released inheritance feature.
• yumyume v0.4.0, a free and open-source social bookmarking client powered by the Nostr protocol, introduces an easier way to bookmark directly from any webpage, features relay optimizations, expandable comments, and a more dynamic homepage.
• Bookstr is a Goodreads/Storygraph alternative built on Nostr. Check it out here.
• Nostr MCP Server is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server offering Nostr capabilities to LLMs like Claude.

• Nostr-relay-tray v2.0.0, a Nostr relay for desktop, available on macOS, Windows, and Linux, now comes with a one-click option to expose your relay to the internet, improved event filtering, and conditional event deletion based on specific conditions.
• NymVPN has been officially launched. It is built on the world’s first Noise Generating Mixnet (NGM), designed to protect metadata and communication patterns, circumvent censorship, defend against cyberattacks, and address various security gaps.
• Tor Browser v14.5a5 is now available for testing.
• GrapheneOS v20250332100 has been released.

Other stuff

• Craig has put together a simple beginner's guide to Nostr.
• Nomishka Dilshan has published the sixteenth edition of Nostr Weekly Recap.
• GIMP v3.0 has been released. It is a free and open-source image editor, used for tasks such as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

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