Perth BitDevs
Bitcoin Telehash Fundraiser Finds a Block
Block found live during the first-ever Bitcoin "telehash" fundraiser, raising US$330K for the 256 Foundation. They were self-hosted solo mining on a FutureBit Apollo, with a bunch of miners donating their hash. 350 entities and 1.12 EH/s at peak. A FutureBit Apollo has a nominal hashrate of 3 TH/s.
Czech National Bank Explores Bitcoin Investment
The Czech National Bank approved a proposal to further explore investing in Bitcoin on 30/01/2025. The Czech Republic is a member of the EU but NOT a member of the eurozone - they use their own currency, Czech koruna (CZK). The ECB/Christine Lagarde responded: "I am confident that bitcoins won’t enter the reserves of any of the central banks of the General Council."
US States Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Proposals
Lots of activity in the US regarding states putting Bitcoin Strategic Reserve-like proposals forward. Here’s the state of play both domestically and internationally (confirmed stances/positions only, no rumoured positions such as Singapore, UAE etc).
Tether News Roundup
Tether reports US$13 billion in net profits for 2024. Tether has exposure to US Treasuries to the tune of US$113 billion, making it one of the largest (~top 10) holders of US Treasuries in the world. Additionally, Tether and Lightning Labs (creators of LND) are teaming up to bring USDT to the Lightning network.
Ark Wallet SDK Now Available
The Ark Wallet SDK is a TypeScript library for building Bitcoin wallets with support for both on-chain and off-chain transactions via the Ark protocol. The Ark protocol is a Bitcoin Layer-2 solution that allows users to transact off-chain using Virtual Transaction Outputs (VTXOs) which are batched by a server into regular on-chain transactions, with users maintaining the ability to exit unilaterally to the main chain at any time.
Ross Is Free!!
Ross Ulbricht has been freed by presidential pardon.
Ledger Co-Founder Kidnapped and Freed
David Balland, co-founder of Ledger, was kidnapped from his home in France early Tuesday and released Wednesday night following a police operation. Jameson Lopp has been keeping a record of such public attacks. Unfortunately we’re going to see this happen more frequently, so ensure that your security protocol considers such physical attacks.
Coinbase Onchain Reputation API
The public surveillance tool provides a "reputation score" between -100 and +100 for wallet addresses, ENS, and Basename IDs, offering a "directional indication of its reputation" to "evaluate transaction trustworthiness." The API returns metadata with detail on the nature of the risk. This looks to be trying to incentivise individuals to reveal their private information so that Coinbase can build a digital panopticon.
Trade Wars, Triffin’s Dilemma & De-dollarisation
Trade wars and Triffin’s dilemma are getting profile, along with old favourites around de-dollarisation, reserve currency and reserve assets, plus Fed interest rates and "money printing." Myth busting: Collateral vs Currency, "de-dollarisation" vs "defending a currency," "QE and Fed rates vs money printing," "Reserve Assets" vs "Reserve Currency," and "Sovereign Funds."
Sparrow v2.1.1 Released
Huge number of changes, Craig Raw has been head down smashing out code. Most notably, improved support for hardware wallets with a new hardware wallet interface, Lark, which replaces HWI.
DeepSeek Broke US Capital Markets (Briefly)
DeepSeek-R1 is a model with performance on par with OpenAI-o1 that excels at reasoning and thinking. Created by a small Chinese company "as a side project" to their quant trading activities. Reportedly trained on a miniscule budget of ~US$6M relative to training costs of other foundation models ($100’s M). They released both a web version and open-sourced models capable of running on powerful consumer hardware: the 32B and 70B models are on par with OpenAI-o1-mini.
Possible Demos
Bitaxe, Seedhammer, Seedsigners.
Recovering a Non-Responsive Bitaxe Hex
Attempting to recover a non-responsive Bitaxe Hex following a failed update. The guide uses Python command line and the goal is to get it hashing from a phone hotspot.