So Comcast says I should not run tor relay. OK, instead I'll run tor obfs4 bridge and i2pd "relay" (not sure about terminology). Thanks for the motivation, Scumcast! But TBH, my bridge is basically inactive, it gets 1-2 connections now. Suprising given ongoing blocks in Russia and elsewhere, I would expect more demand for bridges. Maybe snowflake is more used than obfs4?

Using Tor or encryption? Or, God forbid, de-googled your phone using /e/OS, LineageOS or F-Droid? You are a terrorist! At least in Soviet France. But I remember hearing similar arguments in some prosecution in Spain. To be fair, this is "only" used to justify pre-trial detention. Still, sickening and sad.

La Quadrature du Net

Criminalization of encryption : the 8 december case

This article was written on the basis of information related to the so-called "8 December" case (see the footnotes for a global overview of the cas...

Comcast blocks all traffic to tor relays. Not just tor-related traffic, but ALL traffic. Have a lightning node and want to pay back your usage of tor by running a tor relay? Forget it, Comcast customers will not be able to connect to your lightning node. This is how I learnt about such blocking. But not just lightning: any self-hosted website is effectively prohibited from running tor relay. Just use another IPv4 address, right? They are so abundant after all /s. And seems Comcast hasn't yet heard of IPv6.

For lightning node runners: how to open a channel avoiding change output:

Stacker News

Open a channel spending the whole UTXO (no change output) with lnd & bos \ stacker news

Motivation Simple: saving on tx fees. First, the opening tx is smaller - for 1 input and 1 output, is is 111 vb instead of 154 vb. Second, no need ...

I learnt that Sparrow wallet can import lnd wallet, including taproot UTXOs, so going to use this in the future. But my guide may be useful, because importing lnd wallet takes a few hours, while using "bos fund" is instant.

Statists often use public goods as an argument. "Who would build the roads?" Great, I am convinced. Except... who would finance public goods like defence of Roman Sterlingov and of bitcoin devs? And who attacks them, making the defence necessary? But I am afraid statists could justify some world government... Perhaps I am cherry-picking, and, as a result of zealous US prosecutors, there are 1000 real criminals punished for every Roman Sterlingov. But it seems they have no good evidence against Roman, yet the case is going to trial. Zeal? More like indifference, if not outright abuse of power for personal gain, see the reports of revolving doors between Chainalysis and DoJ. And then there are feudal priviledges (aka qualified immunity) of police and prosecutors. So what motivates them to not abuse their power? Why should I believe this is an exception, and not a rule?

Who the hell does a consolidation tx at 299 vB/sat???

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

And notice the last input - smaller (12377 sats) than additional fee needed to include it (68 * 299 = 20332 sats). Either this entity is dumb, or this is needed for some ordinals or similar. Actually, both alternatives are almost equivalent. 😁

"Ordinals are waste of block space." "Bitcoin mining is a waste of electricity." Spot the difference! In both cases, people are unhappy about free market and want some central commitee to decide who gets scarce resources. There is a target you can blame and hate. But if it is waste, wasters lose money and have to stop once they run out of money. Still, I do blame and hate ordinals, just don't want to censor it. OK, there is a difference, block space is fixed, you cannot generate more, unlike electricity. But even this does not justify central commitee.

Trying mercury wallet (https://mercurywallet.com/), a tool to swap bitcoins off-chain. The biggest flaw is the lack of users, almost nobody to swap the coins with. And their withdrawal fee could be lower, it is 0.5 %. I saw a claim (probably by creators, but cannot find it now) that mere possibility of off-chain swap means that any tx can be off-chain swap so chain analysis is less useful. This is only true with some qualifications. You would need to do fake deposit of X btc into mercury wallet, and then fake withdrawal of X*(1-0.005) btc to simulate paying the fee, so you have to deliberately fake it. And there is an explorer at https://explorer.mercurywallet.com/ , which made me doubt if it is private, but I could not find a link between my original and swapped coin. There are plans to integrate lightning, which is always a good thing both for privacy and for fees.

Greenpeace convinced me, I changed the code - applied semisol's ordisrespector patch on my node. Hope they are happy. 😁 #changethecode #ordisrecpector

People seem to think that hyperbitcoinization is near, but is bitcoin prepared for that? With 200 vB per channel opening, we get 1 vMB/200 = 5000 new channels / block, 720 000 new channels per day. More than a year to onboard just USA, and we already sacrifice on-chain JPEGs in this scenario. That would force people into custodial solutions, because transfer to self-custody would be too expensive or slow. This could even be exploited by governments: "look how expensive it is to open a channel, use a bitcoin bank" - which can do fractional reserve just like in the good old days. Batch opening? If we go crazy with 100 channels per tx and just 1 input, we can get 28835 channels per block. More than 5x better, onboarding USA takes just 72 days - so some people have to wait 72 days for their paycheck. Still not good enough. Channel factories to the rescue? Sure, once they are implemented... TLDR: careful what you wish

Proudly participating in #bankrun . And it reminded me of a campaing in Spanish newspapers back in July 2022. They claimed you may have to justify your cash withdrawal of more than 1000 euros, and have to justify it if more than 3000 euros. For example (google translated to english):

Las Provincias

Dinero en efectivo | El nuevo límite de dinero en efectivo que se puede sacar del cajero según Hacienda | Las Provincias

Los movimientos con dinero en metálico son vigiliados para detectar cualquier fraude o blanqueo de capitales

. If true*, it sounds outrageous in current situation. I am forced to suffer a counterparty risk at least in some conditions, like having more than 3000 eur in bank. And what justification is acceptable? If I may just say "I don't trust banks", then the whole justification thing is pointless. And if I may not? Ah, I have to risk and hope that banks do not fail or are bailed out. Well, I may also buy bitcoin, no limit AFAIK, so perhaps the tax agency is really trying to foster bitcoin adoption. 😀 * I have some doubts, none of the articles mentions concrete part of a law or regulation, and I found nothing concrete in the most obvious candidates (law on money laundering, some tax laws).

elDiario.es

Binance sigue bajo la lupa de la Justicia: otro juzgado investiga por apropiación indebida al gigante de las criptomonedas

La jueza María de los Ángeles Velázquez cita a declarar como imputado al consejero delegado, Changpeng Zhao, tras la querella de un empresario e...

Note that this is a private criminal prosecution, it is clear from wording in original. The victim could have relied on public prosecution, and would not have to hire and pay his own lawyer then. Those fee may be reimbruised, but only if someone is convicted. So either the victim is pretty sure he will obtain coviction and be able to collect, or he is desperate and does not trust public prosecution. The final paragraph of the article is revealing: Binance unblocked the funds after the criminal complaint, so basically admitted they had no good reason to have blocked it. I could say you should not send a cent to such scammers, but I would be preaching to the choir very probably.

Paid for groceries with btc, tomorrow I am going to make a perpetum mobile. Both things are equally impossible according to some people. Now caveats. Didn't use btc directly, but bought a Carrefour gift card at Bitrefill. And paid around 3% extra - 25 eur gift card costs 25.83 euros. It used to be without this extra 3%, and they even used to give 1% reward, only spendable on Bitrefill - no longer. This depends on country and concrete shop, for example hotels.com seems to have 6% discount and 1% reward (didn't try that). And I also have some negative experience: Uber Eats gift cards just did not work, and I was too lazy to ask for refund. (Bitrefill has some refund policy, so theoretically should have been possible, but only 3 months after buying gift card.) In the unlikely case someone wants to zap me, perhaps use me referral link instead:

Bitrefill

Refer-a-Friend Program

Bitrefill (United States) - Shop for Gift Cards, eSIMs, and Mobile Recharges with BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, and more. Pay online with crypto in over 18...

.

Great... LOOP coop-closed channel with me because most of sats had gone to their side and they could not wait mere 3 hours until I would start rebalancing it. I would not care and rant if this wasn't in such high-fee environment. I guess they do it automatically, and their script does not take into account the current on-chain fee. At least some justice: the closing tx is still unconfirmed, perhaps even expulsed from mempool (becasue the channel tx output appears unspent). So they did not gain anything.

Someone is testing Nostr's censorship resistance: @NostrFlix

Upper half inspired by

euronews

Domino effect as more EU institutions ban TikTok on work devices

TikTok is battling privacy concerns and espionage fears over its potential connection with the Chinese Communist Party.

. Lower half should be obvious - all the talk about unhosted wallets, travel rule, KYC, ...

Putin is often portrayed as out of touch with reality (e.g. "3-day" special military operation), yet he gives relatively competent answer about cryptocurrencies. Guess he is just too busy reading Mastering Bitcoin and similar. :)

X (formerly Twitter)

Cory Bates (@corybates1895) on X

Let the Hash Wars begin.