On the night of 14th of June 2011 Wikileaks turned to bitcoin as a lifeline for receiving donations. This was a strategic move to counteract a politically motivated banking blockade crafted by leading banks and payment service providers under the influence of the U.S. The attack has destroyed 95% of the organization’s revenue, and if it wasn’t for Bitcoin, Wikileaks might have ceased to exist. Free speech is inseparable from censorship-resistant money. Remember that!
Hot Off the Press:
💩 A Ton of Shitcoin News From Binance
⛏️ Bitmain Reigns Supreme?
🔥 Blockstream Enters the Mining Game
🔫 Attack on Educational Bitcoin Channels
📈 BlackRock’s Bitcoin Ballgame
🤑 Bitcoin vs the $156T Global Payments Industry
🍏 Apple Sounds the War Drums, attacking Damus, Zeus & Fold
⚡️ 1 Million Zaps: WoS announces the biggest zapathon ever.
👨💻 Fresh releases
Catch Up on Our Picks: 📺 Watch, 🎧 Listen, 📖 Read
🐸 Meme Hub 💜
💩 A Ton of Shitcoin News From Binance
Binance has provided lots of news to discuss this week — from potential Lightning adoption growth to regulatory troubles of the biggest shitcoin casino.
In the past week, a ruling in favor of Binance allowed the exchange to maintain control over customer assets. Despite this, it’s no clear win, as negotiations with the SEC are still ongoing. Currently, an understanding has been reached between the SEC and Binance that restricts Binance’s international platform employees from accessing BinanceUS assets.
On another note, Binance has introduced a new transaction accelerator. This feature allows users to push a bitcoin transaction into the subsequent block — quite a handy tool during times of high user activity and elevated fees. However, there’s a catch — only Binance VIP users can access this feature. Specifically, users must have a monthly trading volume exceeding $1M on the spot market or $15M on futures.
It’s perplexing to see a feature that would benefit beginners, being exclusively available to experienced traders with large volumes. But, there’s a bright side: the more the exchange neglects the average user, the more these users are inclined to discover Bitcoin’s features, such as Replace-by-Fee (RBF). For a detailed understanding of RBF, you can refer to this extensive guide by Bitcoin Manual.
Arguably, the most interesting move by Binance was the long overdue opening of lightning channels. Although there’s been no official statement on Lightning support, this move certainly hints at future plans. Channels of 10 and 5 BTC have been opened with Kraken and OKX, respectively, indicating the probable future introduction of deposit/withdrawal functionalities via the Lightning network.
While Binance appears to position itself as a friendly guide, its focus on profit generation can’t be overlooked. Expect high fees to possibly accompany Lightning withdrawals.
Internationally, Binance’s situation isn’t rosy. News broke this week about Binance exiting the Dutch market, while in France, investigations into the exchange are ongoing.
⛏️ Bitmain Reigns Supreme?
A recent study evaluating the mining sector shows Bitmain as the clear frontrunner.
Karim Helmi, a researcher at Coinmetrics, has conducted a study revealing that the mining rig market isn’t as decentralized as it seems. In fact, three models from Bitmain — the s19, s19jpro, and s19xp — have a stronghold on the market, accounting for a whopping 76%. Consequently, these models are responsible for the majority of the hash rate generation.
More competition in the market would be beneficial, and we’re keenly observing as Blockstream ventures into this space with their mining devices. We’re looking forward to seeing how the market landscape might change in a few years, Karim.
🔫 Attack on Educational Bitcoin Channels
Swan Bitcoin YouTube channel got blocked.
The Swan Bitcoin YouTube channel was removed by the platform this week. Interestingly, YouTube opted to proceed with this action without giving any particular reason.
YouTube’s explanation for the ban:
“We reviewed your channel carefully, and have confirmed that it violates our Community Guidelines. We know this is probably disappointing news, but it’s our job to make sure the YouTube is a safe place for all. We won’t be putting your channel back up on Youtube.”
Though the channel has now been reactivated, the incident raises serious questions about YouTube’s practices. Swan has decided to transfer their educational content about Bitcoin and macroeconomics to their new media outlet on https://Twitter.com/swan.
While Swan’s move is based on valid reasons, it doesn’t represent an ideal solution. Twitter, similar to YouTube, has its own track record of censorship incidents, thus it’s not a dependable platform. We are hopeful and confident that Nostr will offer the tools required for educational initiatives to share their content in a decentralized, censorship-resistant manner. Currently, Nostr’s lightweight relays, which contribute to the protocol’s resilience, cannot host videos, but we are certain that some way will be found. There’s no question about it.
📈 BlackRock’s Bitcoin Ballgame
The leading asset manager has filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF.
BlackRock, the world’s leading asset manager, has filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF, with Coinbase Custody as their chosen custodian. The proposed ETF will be pegged against indices from CF Benchmarks, drawing data from six exchanges. Despite the SEC’s history of rejecting spot Bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock’s application could potentially pave the way for wider Bitcoin adoption and create a new, regulated investment pathway.
🤑 Bitcoin vs the $156T Global Payments Industry
River has released the “Bitcoin vs the $156T Global Payments Industry” research.
We’ve gathered the most interesting tables and charts for you:
https://snort.social/e/note1v2ng5yxmjlk5avyjppp3u42uxg24xts2rulyaz50jcavf388gjhqyu4tm3
Byte-size Buzz:
- Strike now allows users to send faster and cheaper cross-border payments from the U.S. to phone numbers, debit cards, and bank accounts in Mexico.
- Strike moves to in-house bitcoin custody solution.
- The SEC responded to a lawsuit from Coinbase regarding market regulation: “Commission staff anticipate being able to make a recommendation to the Commission regarding Coinbase’s rulemaking petition within the next 120 days.”
- Fedi’s Bitcoin Federations could onboard 1 billion users.
🍏 Apple Sounds the War Drums
This week, Apple threw down the gauntlet to three Lightning payment apps, challenging their existence on the App Store. The tech giant has demanded that these app developers remove the functionality, or face expulsion from the App Store.
Will Casarin, the developer behind Damus, was the first to be issued such a letter:
Subsequently, Zeus was informed that their updated app version would not be allowed on the App Store unless they complied with Apple’s guidelines.
Fold became the third app within a 48-hour timeframe to receive Apple’s written directive:
It’s clear that applications facilitating free financial transactions cannot satisfy the corporate giants’ demand for absolute control and extraction of revenue from developers, creators, and users. The most viable solution appears to be Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). These applications, in their optimal form, could offer users a similar experience, including offline functionality, swift browsing, and notifications, without the need for developers to pay hefty fees to profit-hungry corporations and bureaucratic entities. Tony delves into the basics of PWA in his Habla blog post: https://habla.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
⚡️ 1 Million Zaps
The recent zapathon has set a new record, playing host to the one-millionth zap on Nostr.
This remarkable milestone comes at an intriguing time, coinciding with Apple’s intensified scrutiny of Damus, Nostr’s leading iOS app. Whether this surge is fueled by users’ defiance or the natural expansion of the user base and zap popularity, one fact stands clear: Nostr is unstoppable.
Wallet of Satoshi also reported the outcome of the latest zapathon, marking it an extraordinary event:
While it appears that this zapathon may be the final one for Damus users (for the time being), we advise not to hastily predict Damus’s demise. Will, Damus’s developer, has teased some intriguing plans for navigating Apple’s idiotic demands and maintaining the zap functionality on the App Store. Learn more from the latest episode of Plebchain Radio: https://fountain.fm/episode/vT44m6oe2PdTzvvDZxUF
⚖️ A Comparative Table of Nostr Clients
Pam has published a comparison table for Nostr clients.
> For seasoned Nostr users, it’s an invitation to contribute thoughts for improvement. It’s more than a table — it’s a dialogue. And for the newcomers? It’s an essential guide to navigate through the sea of Nostr apps. Let’s continue enriching this resource!
✍️ Write Reviews, Stack Sats
A new Nostr blogging platform Yakihonne has announced numerous bounties for covering interesting Nostr-related topics — from comparing Nostr clients to explaining NIPs.
> Nostr has long been a great place to stack sats by providing value to community members. Nostriches appreciate the contributions of content creators — from notes to long-form posts to development contributions. Let’s embrace value-4-value!
Bitcoin:
- Stacker news update brought a new “tech” section as well as support for basic keyboard shortcuts for Markdown text formatting.
- BlueWallet v6.4.5 introduced a number of fixes.
- Zeus v0.7.6 did make its way to the App Store and provided the ability to to leave notes on transactions, payments, and invoices, as well as making a number of improvements.
- Alby has rolled out v2.1.0 — a maintenance release with fixes and some minor improvements. Most notable is the new APIs to make it easier to add accounts to the Alby Extension.
- RGB Core v0.10.4 released.
Nostr:
- Jeff has released an update to the Listr app. Lists can now be zapped ⚡️.
- Kieran from Snort.social has implemented a gossip model that optimizes relay load and improves communication between users.
- Coracle has introduced relay ratings and advanced feed search functionality.
- Nostr Sites by BTCapsule: Turn a Nostr note into your own web page. Check out Tony’s page: https://nostrsites.com/tony
- The Nostore app for storing nostr keys is now available on the App Store.
- Primal has introduced full support for DMs.
- Vitor Pampola has released a draft NIP-172 potentially allowing to run Reddit-like Nostr clients.
- Sam has released Not A Zap, a possible solution to Apple’s zap ban.
- Arcade v0.1.0-beta — potentially a worthy replacement for Telegram on Nostr. The beta supports private messaging, public and private channels.
- Zaplinks: Create a QR code to your profile to get zaps instantly.
Don’t forget to zap Herald’s Nostr account ;)
Building on Nostr
Fetching events with NDK by JeffG:
Satoshi Opened A Portal Into Cyberspace
John K Vallis, Saylor, Breedlove, Cason, HODL on the novel form of property which bitcoin represents, and the significance of that for how one understands and engages both themselves, and the world:
BTCPrague
BTCPrague has released two videos from the conference so far. We encourage you to watch Giacomo Zucco’s speech “Ordinals Are Retarded”:
Brianna has posted an article about Nostr on Fobes:
- Nostrovia’s “Bitcoin and China with Joseph Wang”: Listen on Fountain
- Guy Swan’s “Google ‘We Have No Moat…’” read as a part of AI Unchained podcast: Listen on Fountain
Karnage and Sepehr added a handful of RSS feeds to #Nostr. Now you can follow your favorite traditional publications on Nostr.
Nostr just got a bit of a content upgrade!
Thanks to @Sepehr , we now have 19 new RSS feeds (and probably more to come) from popular publications you might know!
You can find them on my profile under recent “people” I followed, or in this list: https://listr.lol/a/naddr1qqy4y56nyprx2etywvpzqx78pgq53vlnzmdr8l3u38eru0n3438lnxqz0mr39wg9e5j0dfq3qvzqqqr4xq8yq7gf
For clients, consider asking users for their interests in onboarding and recommending some of these feeds, or any of the ones we add in the future. This way the user has something to browse even if nobody else talks about that subject much.
Hopefully this also helps encourage more conversations on Nostr, either as direct quotes, or just to kick around some ideas in people’s minds.
Here is a list of publications and their RSS feeds that we’ve added:
NASA Image of the Day
WIRED Science
WIRED AI
Pitchfork
Engadget
Science
Daily
Minimalist
Baker
UX Movement
Fortune
MIT Technology Review
Harvard Business Review
Lifehacker
The Verge
IGN
Android Police
MacRumors
Steam
ESPN
Scientific American
If you have any favorites that are missing, please let me know and I’ll add them to our working to-do list!
None of this would be possible without the legend @Sepehr so please zap him some fat zaps ⚡ if you find the content helpful 🙌
