I’m joined by guests Stephan Livera, Michael Folkson & Wiz to go through the list.

Listen on your favorite podcast app:

Housekeeping

  • 00:00:30 Breez SATSCARD Integration Bounty
    • The main two interactions are initializing the card and unsealing the card slots for sweeping WIFs.
    • From a product standpoint, when tapping the card on the device, Breez should show a dialog displaying the card balance and offer a sweep action to a Breez address.
    • For anyone interested in the work and testing, the Coinkite team are happy to send test cards.
    • Payout: 5M sats (donated by the Coinkite team) for a complete iOS and Android implementations.

Software Releases & Project Updates

  • 00:01:16 Tor Browser 12.0
    • Firefox Extended Support Release 102
    • Multi-locale support for desktop
    • Native Apple Silicon support
    • HTTPS-Only by default for Android
    • Prioritize .onion sites for Android
  • 00:02:44 BTC Pay Server
    • 1.7.1
    • API for create an invoice refund
    • Add metadata to invoice webhook event
    • 1.7.2
    • Add DescriptionHashOnly to Lightning invoice creation endpoint
    • DescriptionHash in the Lightning invoice creation endpoint has been removed
    • Theme extensions
    • 1.7.3
    • Bug fixes and improvements
  • 00:10:03 Wasabi v2.0.2.1
    • Cheaper privacy for whales
    • Automatically verify the signatures of the software updater
    • Prevent accidental coinjoin double spend
    • Faster onboarding experience
    • Now possible to coinjoin coins up to 43000 bitcoin
    • Coinjoin coin selection is improved for whales, giving greater privacy at a lower cost.
    • “Discrete mode” feature reveals the hidden information by hovering your mouse over the hidden items.
    • The coordinator now pays for the coinjoin transaction overhead cost.
    • You can also view transaction details by double clicking the history table.
    • Upgrade to Tor v0.4.7.11
    • Upgrade to .NET 7
  • 00:16:16 Alby v1.21.0 🚀 Thor’s Helmet
    • This version includes the new WebLN/WebBTC interface, making it easier than ever to build full lightning web applications accessing the LND and CLN APIs. It’s now all plain simple JavaScript APIs and full lightning apps can be deployed as simple JavaScript web apps.
    • Alby + Nostr
    • Deployed NIP-05 for Alby accounts with nostr
    • Add your public key to your account, get the verified badge and allow everyone to lookup your public key with your lightning address.
    • “Alby also supports custom payment addresses now, michael will be releasing a guide soon. It is as easy as hosting a static file just like we do for nip5. It creates a proxy similar to LNURL-pay“
  • 00:29:24 Zeus v0.7.0
    • Lightning Node Connect
    • New default home screen
    • BIP21/Unified QRs
    • BTCPay LNbank support
    • LND: support for channel alias SCIDs
    • New clipboard UX
    • Better fee UX for LND
    • Five new themes
  • 00:31:11 Fountain 0.5.8
    • Bug fixes and improvements.
  • 00:34:03 Umbrel Update 24.0.1-2
    • Advanced settings are here in the new #Bitcoin Node app update on Umbrel.
    • Toggle Tor, Clearnet, I2P, Full RBF, and incoming connections (listening node). Switch networks. Speed up initial sync with cache size. And delete old blocks.
  • 00:40:07 OBW v0.2.0
    • Adds experimental support to LUD-18, invoice creation with NameDesc! and does other minor improvements.
  • 00:40:31 Liana 0.1: first beta release
    • Simple Bitcoin wallet that features a timelocked recovery path for all your coins.
    • Coins are spendable as with a regular wallet but a secondary key becomes available after a configurable period of time should the primary one not be accessible anymore.
    • Can be used for inheritance, where the owner of the coins is holding the primary key and the heir the secondary one.
    • Can also be leveraged for recovery where a single person is holding both but different tradeoffs can be made between the backup(s) of the directly accessible and timelocked keys.
  • 00:42:28 Ledger + Miniscript
    • An upcoming version of the Ledger Nano Bitcoin application will have native support for miniscript.
  • 00:48:00 Damus
    • 0.1.7 2022-12-21
    • Only show inline images from your friends
    • Improved look of profile view
    • 0.1.8 2022-12-21
    • Lots of overall design polish (Sam DuBois)
    • Show real name next to username in timelines (Sam DuBois)
    • Added ability to copy and share image (@futurepaul)
    • Hide private key in config, make it easier to copy keys (Nitesh Balusu)
    • 0.1.8-3 2022-12-23
    • Added profile edit view
    • 0.1.8-4 2022-12-26
    • Long press lightning tip button to copy lnurl
    • Only reload global view on pulldown refresh
    • Save privkey in keychain instead of user defaults
    • 01:01:49 Samurai - The Stealth Mode Update

Project spotlight

  • 01:06:09 SMS4Sats
    • Send and receive SMS without giving away your phone number
  • 01:06:48 LNVPN
    • Privacy focused VPN provider. We accept only Lightning payments.
    • No Account/Email/KYC/Registration/Credit card
    • No Data stored
  • 01:06:54 Heatbit: The first electric heater that mines bitcoin.
  • 01:07:16 Zaprite - Bitcoin invoicing, project management and expense tracking
    • No KYC! Sign-up with just an email address
    • Accept Bitcoin, Lightning, Liquid and credit/debit card payments
    • Get notified when invoices are paid
    • Manage projects and tasks
    • Free plan available!

Boosts

  • 01:07:23 Thanks to everyone who streamed sats, and shoutout to our top boosters:
    • @rot13maxi (5,000 sats) “An hour in and Adam Curry hasn’t read Sparrow release notes yet. 3/5.”
    • @apemithrandir
    • (7,777 sats) “Value 4 value. good to see you are a changed man nvk. hopefully my sats helped.”
    • (7,777 sats) “Great discussion. i wish you had the full [mining experts] panel on. Maybe do another one with everyone in a few months.”
    • (7,777 sats) “I hope the exchanges all collapse. I liked the workflow NVK described. Bring back the coffee shop cash swap but this time with an OpenDime!”
    • @user4811802839281498 (19,000 sats)
    • @hightraverse (50,000 sats)
    • @vake (10,000 sats, 5,000 sats)
    • @user1628071985352022 (7,500 sats)
    • @raduza (5,555 sats) “All signal, not bored yet”
    • @nachobitcoin (103,100 sats) “Coinkite is a sauna apparel company disguised as a hardware company. few understand this.”
    • @erik99 (50,000 sats) “Stay humble,stack sats”
    • @ca_dannerrrrr (30,000 sats) “How to get my Satoshi White Paper Art considered for the SatsCard? Some are hanging at Bitcoin Park to see in person! website is www.caroleanndanner.com, Twitter is @caroleanndanner. Love the podcast and your products!”

News & Noteworthy

  • 01:09:31 The Block, a media company that says it covers crypto news independently, has been secretly funded for over a year with money funneled to The Block’s CEO from the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency trading firm, sources told Axios.
  • 01:10:00 EU to Make Crypto Companies Report Tax Details to Authorities
    • TThe EU body says it’s still working on how to enforce the measures on wallet providers or exchanges based outside the bloc.
    • The proposed new tax rules, known as the eighth Directive on Administrative Cooperation, or DAC8, seeks to halt billions of euros in evasion by taxpayers stashing crypto abroad.
  • 01:10:34 Coinbase Received 12320 Government Demands for Customer Info This Year
    • Up 66% From Last Year
    • ~80% of law enforcement requests were from the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Spain.
  • 01:10:56 Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act introduced today by Sens. Warren and Marshall
    • Would force anyone who helps maintain public blockchain infrastructure, either through software development or validating transactions on the network, to register as a Financial Institution (FI).They would be obligated to:
    • Identify and record the personal information of every person who uses their software or sends transactions over their internet-connected computers
    • Develop risk-calibrated AML programs that block persons from using their software or network throughput if they suspect those people are moving funds related to crime
    • File reports about their users without a warrant, government request, or probable cause as the trigger.
    • Banned from making any transactions involving privacy tools or privacy preserving cryptocurrencies
  • 01:11:08 Bitcoin miner Core Scientific is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
    • Core Scientific, one of the largest publicly traded crypto mining companies in the U.S., is filing for bankruptcy.
    • The company still generates positive cash flow, and plans to continue mining while repaying debtholders.
    • The stock is down 98% this year as plunging crypto prices and rising energy prices made mining a much harder business.
  • 01:12:37 More than 100 bitcoins tied to the defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX transferred out of cold wallets
    • QuadrigaCX went bankrupt in 2019 after the apparent death of founder and CEO Gerald Cotten. At the time of its collapse, Quadriga was believed to have owed thousands of customers nearly $200 million in various cryptocurrencies
    • EY, which is acting as the trustee for Quadriga’s estate, announced in February 2019 that it lost control of about 100 BTC after mistakenly sending the coins to Quadriga-operated cold wallets that the Big Four financial services firm said it couldn’t access.
    • The company’s bankruptcy trustee, Ernst and Young, claim they did not initiate the transfers.
    • Blockchain sleuth zachxbt said on Twitter that the majority of these funds, nearly 70 BTC, appear to have gone to Wasabi, a coin mixing service.
  • 01:16:49 HRF Bitcoin Development Fund Awards $325K In New Grants
    • $50,000 to Gleb Naumenko for his work on Bitcoin Core and Coinpool, a concept for scaling Bitcoin.
    • $50,000 to Furzy for his work on Bitcoin Core, mainly addressing stability, security and performance features.
    • $25,000 to Bitcoin4India (community initiatives and local meetups, education, translation projects and support of local artisans).
    • $25,000 to Bitcoin Mountain for their building of circular economies, meetups, conferences and training in Cameroon.
    • $25,000 to the We Are All Satoshi project, an Africa-based organization helping steer teenage women to contributing to Bitcoin.
    • $25,000 to Tor relay operator associations to support increased network reliability and performance.
    • $25,000 to Bitcoin Magazine Ukraine to support regular Bitcoin meetups in Kyiv, which continue even in the midst of the war.
    • $25,000 to Dusty for his work on Lightning Splicing.
    • $25,000 to Raseef 22, independent pan-Arab media with focus on freedom, democracy and human rights, social impacts of bitcoin.
    • $25,000 to digital democracy platform New Belarus (includes programming focused on building a bitcoin financial infrastructure).
    • $15,000 travel grants to support students, activists, and developers at the Africa Bitcoin Conference.
    • $10,000 to support bitcoin ++, a Mexico City based Bitcoin developer conference that has a specific privacy focus.
  • 01:17:01 Paul Sztorc Launches ‘Layer 2 Labs’ Company to Promote and Develop Drivechains Proposal with $3M Seed Funding
  • 01:18:28 Lastpass: Hackers Stole Customer Vault Data in Cloud Storage Breach
    • Data Vulnerable to Master Password Bruteforce
    • Sensitive Customer Info Also Taken
  • 01:27:48 A new Bitcoin-based encrypted chat platform has been announced at the Adopting Bitcoin conference, BLIP
    • Leverages Hexum, a proprietary multilayer encryption method, also created by the team behind BLIP, that promises a more secure communication than popular end-to-end (E2E) encrypted apps.
    • “WhatsApp and Signal use one static private key. The Hexum encryption method gives you a private key per message or per interaction. So hacking that is very difficult,” Alejandro Muyshondt, El Salvador national security advisor and co-founder of BLIP founding company High Voltage, told Bitcoin Magazine. -Everything goes through Lightning and a phone number is not required.
  • 01:28:43 Lightning Privacy Research
    • Set out to investigate potential improvements to Lightning on both the protocol level and in how it’s used. With an awareness of current privacy best practices and pitfalls, what else is possible to improve Lightning privacy?
  • 01:31:00 At least 17% of Bitcoin Core 24.x listening nodes are running full-rbf
  • 01:31:14 Breez raised $4.5M round to accelerate Lightning as a Service (LaaS)
    • Laas is a visionary new approach to bringing virtually instantaneous and frictionless #bitcoin payments to the global mainstream
    • Breez is reimagining how Lightning ⚡ could work with a drop-in non-custodial SDK that would allow any company to easily integrate P2P payments and give users access to their bitcoin from any device or app.
  • 01:32:05 CashuBTC is now available for everyone via @LNbits
  • 01:36:42 Paxful Delists ETH
  • 01:36:47 Portion of Bitcoin Supply Held by Retail Investors Reaches All-Time High (Glassnode)
    • Retail investors are accumulating more and more Bitcoin, according to blockchain data from Glassnode, setting a new peak.
    • About 17% of Bitcoin’s total circulating supply is now held by retail investors, according to recent public blockchain data curated by analytics firm, Glassnode.
  • 01:36:54 NVK.org: How to setup NIP5 verification using Github Pages
  • 01:37:10 AndrĂ© Neves: Set up your very own #nostr relay server in under 5 minutes
  • 01:39:12 WASI cryptography APIs (proposal)
  • 01:40:23 MicroStrategy increases #Bitcoin Holdings by 2500 BTC
    • As of 12/27/22 @MicroStrategy holds ~132,500 bitcoin acquired for ~$4.03 billion at an average price of ~$30,397 per BTC.

Nostr Corner

Audience Questions

  • 01:41:20 “Is it possible (or advisable) to use the lightning network for coin mixing? If so, what’s the best way to do it, and what are the privacy tradeoffs?” - STACK2THEFUTURE

Shoutouts

  • moar (1000 sats)
  • moar podcasts (50,000 sats)

Events

Episode submission ideas

  • We’re looking for ideas for interesting panel conversations. To send Bitcoin related questions, just go to bitcoin.review and follow the contact links at the bottom of the page.

Get in touch with the pod

Did I get anything wrong above? Help me correct it producer@coinkite.com