• 🥸 Faketoshi Strikes Back
• 🎰 Bitcoin Isn’t Gambling!
• 🇰🇼 Kuwait Gives Bitcoin the Boot
• 🛂 US Big Brother Tightens his Grip
• 👁️ Trading Eyeballs for Equality?
• ✍️ BitGo Integrates MuSig2
  • Byte-size Buzz:
• 🧮 Nostr Recap
• 👨‍💻 Pleblab Introduced a New Nostr Dev Course
• 🫧 Soapbox Bags OpenSats Grant for Ditto
• 🐦 Wanna Chat? Pay!
• 🤖 Nostr + AI = 💜
  • Byte-size Buzz
  • Bitcoin
  • Nostr

Hey bitcoiner!

This week we’ve seen the true beauty of numbers appear right in front of our eyes…

Hot Off the Press:

🥸 Faketoshi Strikes Back
🎰 Bitcoin Isn’t Gambling!
🇰🇼 Kuwait Gives Bitcoin the Boot
🛂 US Big Brother Tightens his Grip
👁️ Trading Eyeballs for Equality?
✍️ BitGo Integrates MuSig2
👨‍💻 @pleblab Introduced a New Nostr Dev Course
🫧 Soapbox Bags OpenSats Grant for Ditto
🐦 Wanna Chat? Pay!
🤖 Nostr + AI = 💜
📺 Watching, 🎧 Lustening and 📚 Reading tips
🐸 Meme collection by @hlx2…8mlu

Mempool:

Lightning:

Mining:

§🥸 Faketoshi Strikes Back

Craig Wright grants appeal in Bitcoin lawsuit.

UK court grants appeal to Craig Wright in Bitcoin copyright lawsuit. Wright claims copyright to Bitcoin white paper and database. Ruling reversed, giving him a chance to argue his case. Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund denies his identity as Satoshi Nakamoto and calls for proof. Trial expected in 2024. Wright argues Bitcoin Core developers control the network, facing opposition from BLDF. Concerns raised over open-source software implications.

While Craig Wright persists in his legal battle, the Bitcoin community remains skeptical of his claims. Given the opposition and lack of evidence supporting his identity as Satoshi Nakamoto, it is obvious that all his attempts to assert copyright over Bitcoin’s white paper and database will ultimately fail. As time goes on, it is hoped that the news feed will be free from such controversies, allowing the focus to shift back to the genuine progress and innovation in the Bitcoin space.

§🎰 Bitcoin Isn’t Gambling!

UK Government Says No Dice to Bitcoin Gambling Regulation

https://cdn.nostr.build/i/b6dbe2978f57e409fc0b64b6bc60b50fab9e73a2b3c6d562b2b06244bea3949e.jpg

The Treasury Committee’s “same risk, same regulatory outcome” suggestion didn’t sit well with the UK government. It raised concerns about conflicting mandates with financial regulators. The government is already knee-deep in crafting market regulations and is aiming to set standards for Bitcoin firms. The legislation, which will take into account the committee’s recommendations, could be in force by late 2023.

The UK government’s decision to reject the proposal to regulate Bitcoin as gambling might be seen as a win for the market’s long-term development. However, some UK citizens might have preferred the gambling angle, potentially dodging stricter regulations and enjoying lower taxes. This makes it a hot-button issue among Bitcoin investors in the country.

§🇰🇼 Kuwait Gives Bitcoin the Boot

Kuwait bans all Bitcoin and shitcoins transactions.

Seems like Kuwait’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) has decided to play the party pooper for all things Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the country. They’ve slapped a big, fat “NO” on Bitcoin payments, investments, and even mining. Talk about a buzzkill!

The CMA has also put the kibosh on local regulators handing out licenses to firms that offer virtual asset services as a commercial business. But hey, if you’re dealing with securities and other financial instruments regulated by the Central Bank of Kuwait and the CMA, you’re in the clear. Phew!

The regulator has issued a warning to customers about the risks tied to virtual assets, highlighting that they don’t have legal status and lack backing from any asset or issuer. This leaves their prices open to speculation and sharp drops.

Same shit, different country. The mindset of those in power seems to be stuck in the traditional centralized systems they’re so comfortable with and used to. But here’s the kicker: bitcoin doesn’t play by traditional rules. It can’t be banned. They can block their citizens from buying bitcoin via traditional banking routes, they can drive miners out of the country, but they can’t stop Bitcoin. The best they can hope for is to fall behind in this race to acquire the soundest money by the government and its citizens. It remains to be seen how much good that’ll do them.

§🛂 US Big Brother Tightens his Grip

Starting Jan 1 2024 US citizens transacting over $10k will have to provide detailed info

Coin Center’s case challenging Congress’s expansion of Section 6050I of the tax code was dismissed as unripe by the district court. This law will require citizens who are recipients of crypto payments of $10,000 or more to report to the government not just the transaction, but the Personally Identifiable Information of the sender as well - all without a warrant.

See the discussion below for details:

Seems like walls are closing in across the world, and we have to fight for our rights. But make no mistake, this is not the issue of Bitcoin, this is a problem caused by the government leaders who seek control, masking their actions behind care about the citizens and attempts to fight evil criminals and fraudsters. Make no mistake, if we let surveillance into our homes and our pockets, regaining our freedoms will be really challenging.

§👁️ Trading Eyeballs for Equality?

Worldcoin is enticing citizens of developing countries with financial equality in exchange for their biometric data.

Worldcoin, a new player in the shitcoin arena, is promising to eradicate financial inequality. But there’s a catch - they want your biometrics. Is that too steep a price?

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1451990496537088000?s=20

The company is luring users by scanning their irises and other biometric data, offering them free money in return. Worldcoin’s recruitment drive is mainly aimed at lower-income communities in developing countries, with field testing conducted in 24 countries, including Sudan, Indonesia, Chile, and Kenya. The startup has set a lofty goal of a billion sign-ups by 2023.

Interestingly, the company’s plan to distribute the new world coin equally among the earth’s population seems a bit skewed, considering 20% of the coins have already been allocated to Worldcoin’s full-time employees and investors.

Despite the controversies, Worldcoin has managed to attract substantial investment, with Andreessen Horowitz recently leading a $100 million investment round that tripled the startup’s valuation to $3 billion.

History repeats itself. Information is power, and those hungry for power will continue to invest their ever-inflating dollars in anything that gives them access to your data. Quick-witted crypto entrepreneurs keep coming up with innovative ways to harvest that data in a bid to raise funds from VCs and secure a comfortable future for themselves. This is the definition of fast money: get in, pull the rug, get out. And your iris scan? It’ll remain up there (unless you really believe they delete that info) long after you’re gone. This is why we Bitcoin.

§✍️ BitGo Integrates MuSig2

A major US payment provider is integrating multisignatures on top of Schnorr into its wallets.

This can increase privacy and reduce fees, as MuSig2 operates as a single private-public key wallet, just like the single-sig ones do.

“Aggregating multiple keys and signatures into a single key and signature that appear on chain is a big efficiency gain for multi-signature transactions”

§Byte-size Buzz:

• @Max shared a sneak peek of the upcoming wasabi wallet release:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plan to back the dollar with Bitcoin & end Bitcoin taxes:

• Crypto whales targeted in wave of home invasions near Vancouver.

• Wasabi wallet turned out to be susceptible to fingerprinting.

• Gensler’s doing to crypto what he did to gold.

• MIT researchers acknowledge the grid balancing, methane mitigating benefits of bitcoin mining in new paper.

https://twitter.com/Dennis_Porter_/status/1681144031877959681?t=ah4dwBQ8VLTp9OwcO2BWXQ&s=19

• Bitcoin received 99% of fund inflows into cryptocurrency investment products last week.

§🧮 Nostr Recap

§👨‍💻 Pleblab Introduced a New Nostr Dev Course

Pleblab, a group of tech savvy individuals, famous for their Lightning workshops and Bitcoin courses, introduced a Nostr course for developers.

The course is suitable even for people without any coding experience and is definitely useful to understand the fundamentals of Nostr. You will create your first Nostr app and be well on route to becoming a Nostr developer. We find this to be a great opportunity as Nostr is growing fast and developers are very much needed here.

There are a few options to purchase the course, including the opportunity to apply via Oshi and get 17% sats back, however we didn’t find a way to pay with sats directly. Waiting for a reply from the team.

§🫧 Soapbox Bags OpenSats Grant for Ditto

Soapbox has secured an OpenSats grant to develop Ditto, a project to port Soapbox to Nostr.

Soapbox, a source of innovation on the Fediverse, is addressing the limitations of the ActivityPub protocol used by Mastodon with Nostr. The new project, Ditto, is an open-source, self-hosted social media server for online communities, built on the Nostr protocol. OpenSats has agreed to fund Soapbox for one year out of its Nostr fund, and Alex Gleason has stepped down from his role at Truth Social to pursue this mission full time.

Details:

• Announcement
• GitLab repository

§🐦 Wanna Chat? Pay!

Twitter has decided to play hardball with unverified users.

Twitter’s latest move has got everyone tweeting. The social media behemoth is putting a leash on unverified users by limiting their daily direct messages. The magic number remains a secret, though. While some users are doing a happy dance, hoping for less spam, others are crying foul, suspecting a push towards the paid Twitter Blue service.

Meanwhile Nostr CEO announced the new feature called Nostr+ 🤣

When the going gets tough, traditional platforms get restrictive. Some users might see this as a necessary evil, but they’re not seeing the full picture: the mere ability of tech giants to put a cap on users’ actions is a red flag. Who’s to say you won’t be next on the chopping block if it suits the company’s needs?

§🤖 Nostr + AI = 💜

AI generated transcripts are now available in the developer version of Highlighter

Pablo has been working hard on a so-called a Data Vending Machine (DVM) and his efforts are obviously paying off. The developer has recently made what can easily be called mind blowing tech public, even though for the more reckless ones. Now, if you are using the developer version of the Highlighter app (more about it in Tony’s guide here), you can have AIs compete to provide the transcript of a podcast, video or any other media for you to be able to save and/or highlight the pieces you want and convert the material into native Nostr events.

Embrace the technology, or bite the dust 💨. The world we are living in is moving exponentially faster and it is ever harder to keep up. Instead of trying to push back on such developments, the smart thing to do is embrace change and use the tools at our hands to make ourselves more efficient. The first episode of Guy Swan’s podcast with Jeff Booth is well worth your time to feel the magnitude of the happenings.

§Byte-size Buzz

• Snort got a new logo

• A preview of Nostr Browser by Brugeman

• Pablo announced AI custom-made feeds for Highlighter

§Bitcoin

• First version of Mutiny wallet is available for Android

• All new Blockstream Jade is available for pre-order.

• Hodl Hodl dropped a fully redesigned version of their non-custodial lending platform Lend. You can support Bitcoin Herald by signing up on Hodl Hodl using our referral link.

• Sparrow Wallet v1.7.8 now supports Taproot message signing (BIP322) and much more.

• Nunchuck Wallet release introduced numerous updates. GitHub | App Store.

• Mempool.space released a clock and a calculator.

§Nostr

• Yet another update of Nostr Kiwi:

• https://www.nostrnet.work/ by @iefan 🕊️ allows you to manage all your Nostr apps from a single place.

• A simple question-and-answer Nostr client - Swarmstr - released.

• Marce Files starring Avi Burra

• Pav from Synonym talks about Lightning Liquidity Providers and sheds light on their functionality: The Rise of Lightning Service Providers

• Moderated Content: Hanging by a Thread. This episode elaborates on the legality of moderation and free speech on social media. (h/t @rabble). Listen on Fountain

Meme collection by @hlx2…8mlu

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