Good Morning, Bitcoin - Saturday, April 26th, 2025

Headlines

• Spiral renews support for Dan Gould and Joschisan. The organization has renewed support for Dan Gould, who is developing the Payjoin Dev Kit (PDK), and Joschisan, a Fedimint developer focused on simplifying federations.
• Metaplanet buys another 145 BTC. The Tokyo-listed company has purchased an additional 145 BTC for $13.6 million. Their total bitcoin holdings now stand at 5,000 coins, worth around $428.1 million.
• Semler Scientific has increased its bitcoin holdings to 3,303 BTC. The company acquired an additional 111 BTC at an average price of $90,124. The purchase was funded through proceeds from an at-the-market offering and cash reserves, as stated in a press release.
• The Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Bill 2025 introduced in Kenya. The new legislation aims to establish a comprehensive legal framework for licensing, regulating, and supervising virtual asset service providers (VASPs), with strict penalties for non-compliant entities.
• Russian government to launch a cryptocurrency exchange. The country's Ministry of Finance and Central Bank announced plans to establish a trading platform for "highly qualified investors" that "will legalize crypto assets and bring crypto operations out of the shadows."
• All virtual asset service providers expect to be fully compliant with the Travel Rule by the end of 2025. A survey by financial surveillance specialist Notabene reveals that 90% of virtual asset service providers (VASPs) expect full Travel Rule compliance by mid-2025, with all aiming for compliance by year-end. The survey also shows a significant rise in VASPs blocking withdrawals until beneficiary information is confirmed, increasing from 2.9% in 2024 to 15.4% now. Additionally, about 20% of VASPs return deposits if originator data is missing.
• UN claims Bitcoin mining is a "powerful tool" for money laundering. The Rage's analysis suggests that the recent United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report on crime in South-East Asia makes little sense and hints at the potential introduction of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures at the mining level.
• Riot Platforms has obtained a $100 million credit facility from Coinbase Credit, using bitcoin as collateral for short-term funding to support its expansion. The firm's CEO, Jason Les, stated that this facility is crucial for diversifying financing sources and driving long-term stockholder value through strategic growth initiatives.
• Bitdeer raises $179M in loans and equity amid Bitcoin chip push. The Miner Mag reports that Bitdeer entered into a loan agreement with its affiliate Matrixport for up to $200 million in April, as disclosed in its annual report filed on Monday.
• Federal Reserve retracts guidance discouraging banks from engaging in 'crypto.' The U.S. Federal Reserve withdrew guidance that discouraged banks from crypto and stablecoin activities, as announced by its Board of Governors on Thursday. This includes rescinding a 2022 supervisory letter requiring prior notification of crypto activities and 2023 stablecoin requirements.

"As a result, the Board will no longer expect banks to provide notification and will instead monitor banks' crypto-asset activities through the normal supervisory process," reads the FED statement.

• UAE-based Islamic bank ruya launches Shari’ah-compliant bitcoin investing. The bank has become the world’s first Islamic bank to provide direct access to virtual asset investments, including Bitcoin, via its mobile app, per Bitcoin Magazine.
• U.S. 'crypto' scam losses amounted to $9.3B in 2024. The US The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reported $9.3 billion losses in cryptocurrency-related scams in 2024, noting a troubling trend of scams targeting older Americans, which accounted for over $2.8 billion of those losses.

• North Korean hackers establish fake companies to target 'crypto' developers. Silent Push researchers reported that hackers linked to the Lazarus Group created three shell companies, two of which are based in the U.S., with the objective of spreading malware through deceptive job interview scams aimed at individuals seeking jobs in cryptocurrency companies.
• Citrea deployed its Clementine Bridge on the Bitcoin testnet. The bridge utilizes the BitVM2 programming language to inherit validity from Bitcoin, allegedly providing "the safest and most trust-minimized way to use BTC in decentralized finance."
• Hesperides University offers a Master’s degree in Bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine reports the launch of the first-ever Spanish-language Master’s program dedicated exclusively to Bitcoin. Starting April 28, 2025, this fully online program will equip professionals with technical, economic, legal, and philosophical skills to excel in the Bitcoin era.
• BTC in D.C. event is set to take place on September 30 - October 1 in Washington, D.C. Learn more about this initiative here.

Use the tools

• Bitcoin Keeper just got a new look. Version 2.2.0 of the mobile multisig app brought a new branding design, along with a Keeper Private tier, testnet support, ability to import and export BIP-329 labels, and the option to use a Server Key with multiple users.
  • Earlier this month the project also announced Keeper Learn service, offering clear and guided Bitcoin learning sessions for both groups and individuals.
• Keeper Desktop v0.2.2, a companion desktop app for Bitcoin Keeper mobile app, received a renewed branding update, too.

• Blockstream Green Desktop v2.0.25 updates GDK to v0.75.1 and fixes amount parsing issues when switching from fiat denomination to Liquid asset.
• Lightning Loop v0.31.0-beta enhances the loop listswaps command by improving the ability to filter the response.
• Lightning-kmp v1.10.0, an implementation of the Lightning Network in Kotlin, is now available.
• LND v0.19.0-beta.rc3, the latest beta release candidate of LND is now ready for testing.
• ZEUS v0.11.0-alpha2 is now available for testing, too. It's nuts.
• JoinMarket Fidelity Bond Simulator helps potential JoinMarket makers evaluate their competitive position in the market based on fidelity bonds.
• UTXOscope is a text-only Bitcoin blockchain analysis tool that visualizes price dynamics using only on-chain data. The project is inspired by UTXOracle.

• Damus v1.14 TestFlight release is now available for Purple subscribers. It comes with one-click wallet setup powered by Coinos, NWC wallet transactions view, ability to hide 'hellthreads', NIP-65 relay list support, and more.
• 0xchat v1.4.9, a mobile Nostr chat app, implements updated NIP-29 group logic with support for group admin roles, and adds support for Aegis signer URL scheme login on iOS.
• Amber v3.3.0, a Nostr event signer for Android, removes special characters when pasting an nsec.
• Citrine v0.7.4, a local Nostr relay for Android devices, fixes an issue with database exports.
• Wavlake v1.1.5.-1 addresses a bug for new user sign-up.
• Sobrkey is a sobriety tracking and community support application built on Nostr.
• Yumyume v0.5.0, a social bookmarking client powered by the Nostr protocol, now uses NIP-B0 with Kind 39701 events, offers a unified homepage with feed, tags, and bookmarking in one place, and various bug fixes and code improvements.
• Nostrmo v3.0.0, a Flutter Nostr client for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web and Linux, is now available. This version adds support for nesigner (a hardware Nostr signer on ESP32) on Windows, Linux, and macOS, uses ISar to recode local relay's database, shows comment events (kind: 1111), and more.

• Nostr PHP v1.7.1, a PHP Helper library for Nostr, has added support for NIP-19 encoding and decoding bech32-encoded entities with identifiers and metadata, as well as some smaller fixes.
• PABLOF7z has released a NDK Sqlite WASM cache adapter. It features all the basics of an NDK cache adapter, automatic unpublished event tracking, optional decrypted event caching, and automatic loading of the required WASM.
• Cashu Dev Kit (CDK) v0.9.1 has been released with the latest fixes and improvements.
• Satoshi Escrow is a non-custodial peer-to-peer Bitcoin dispute resolution vehicle using Nostr keys.
• Boltz Web App v1.7.4 implements Zap Swaps for paying Lightning invoices as low as 21 sats.
• The Zap Swap functionality is now also available on Misty Breez v0.1.4-beta.
• Ark Labs has shared a proof-of-concept for integrating Taproot Assets in Ark. The project employs a local Docker network, configured externally, to mimic interactions with a Taproot Assets daemon (tapd) and a Bitcoin node. Its primary interface is an interactive REPL, allowing users to execute commands such as depositing BTC, minting assets, onboarding assets and BTC, and checking asset and BTC balances, among other functions.
  • For more technical details, see a full blog post here.

• NodeGuard v0.16.2 emoves truncate on destination address for pending signature withdrawals.
• The latest updates for Zaprite, a Bitcoin invoicing platform, include update notifications, a new disablePaymentNotifs option in API Order creation fields, and a few other improvements and fixes.
• Sovereign Craft is a Bitcoin-based Minecraft server and education platform teaching players about Bitcoin through play.
• Geyser.fund has launched Geyser Launchpad for early stage projects before they go live.
• NymVPN v2025.6, a privacy-focused VPN built with an integrated mixnet, delivers improved connectivity and a refined user experience.
• Maple AI, a private AI chat by by OpenSecret, is now available as desktop app for macOS and Linux.
• SimpleX Chat v6.3.3 now supports connecting via short connection links.
• The Tor Project has announced user support in Farsi.

Other stuff

• Financial Freedom Report #71 by the Human Rights Foundation is now available.
• Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #351 covers a new aggregate signature protocol compatible with secp256k1 and describes a standardized backup scheme for wallet descriptors.
• Kiara Bickers wrote an article on secp256k1lab, an attempt at a unified, reusable standard for cryptographic BIP reference secp256k1 code.
• Bitcoin Feature Matrix by Bitcoin Optech tracks the interoperability of Bitcoin products and services.
• BitBox has published a blog post on the BIP-329 standard for wallet labels and how to use it with the BitBoxApp.
• bitcoin.softforks.org is a site for comparing various bitcoin soft fork proposals.
• Bitcoin Thunderbolt paper describes an off-chain protocol for asynchronous, secure transfer of Bitcoin UTXOs between uncoordinated users.

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