Perth BitDevs
Strategic Bitcoin (Crypto) Reserve Executive Order
First(?) Open Source Secure Element Unveiled
Tropic Square, a startup backed by SatoshiLabs - the company behind Trezor signing devices - unveiled its final pre-production samples before the mass production and market launch of their open-source TROPIC01 secure element.
Demand Pool - First Stratum V2 Bitcoin Mining Pool
The Stratum V2 protocol boosts Bitcoin’s decentralization and privacy by enabling miners to create their own block templates, rather than just using the block templates specified by the pool. The pool is not yet operational. More decentralisation in mining, and in the creation of block templates is crucial.
AntPool & Friends - Mining Pool Centralisation
Recent observations of invalid mining jobs has provided further evidence of AntPool effectively controlling the transaction selection and prioritisation and thus block creation of many Bitcoin mining pools (AntPool, Braiins, Poolin, Binance Pool, Ultimus, CloverPool, Rawpool, etc). "A single custodian now controls the coinbase addresses of at least 9 pools, representing 47% of total hashrate."
Russia Using Bitcoin for Oil Trades
According to a Reuters report, Russian oil companies and traders increasingly conduct transactions in Bitcoin and crypto, allowing them to circumvent restrictions from Western nations. Sources say monthly trade volumes are already in the tens of millions of dollars.
Update on the Race Between US States Adopting Bitcoin-Friendly Law
Placeholder - ongoing tracking of state-level Bitcoin legislation progress.
Libertarian Party of Australia Unveils Bitcoin Policy
A comprehensive 23-page policy PDF covering: establishing an Australian Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, reforming taxation framework for Bitcoin, the right to self-custody, legal recognition, support for Bitcoin education and awareness, regulatory certainty for Bitcoin businesses, protecting financial sovereignty and privacy, and Bitcoin mining and energy market integration.
PSBT Explorer
The Case for Cross-Input Signature Aggregation (CISA)
Key aggregation combines multiple public keys into a single aggregated public key at address creation time, so a group of signers can produce one joint Schnorr signature. Signature aggregation (CISA) occurs at signing time - taking multiple signatures from different inputs with different public keys and combining them into one. Half aggregation (half-agg) allows signatures to be combined after they are individually produced, without signers needing to interact. Full aggregation (full-agg) requires collaborative signing. CISA itself does not directly improve privacy since all public keys and inputs are still visible.
Electrum Str!
Recent (Convincing) Phishing Attempts
Examples of phishing attempts purportedly to be from Gemini & Coinbase.