Fiat payment rails are such a shitshow.🤬 I tried for an hour to buy an xmas gift on Sony's PlayStation Store and they wouldn't take my dirty fiat via credit cards or even using traitorous Paypal. I had to eventually break down and buy a gift card from @The Bitcoin Company with some precious sats. Using ⚡ took only 5 min to buy/redeem/purchase my gift game. 😎 Nostr delivery of the gift card was a nice touch also.

The Swedish central bank (the Riksbank) must ask parliment for funding if their balance sheet goes more than 40B kronor negative. They are currently 18B kronor in the hole. This recent Swedish law related to funding the Riksbank was alledgedly passed to ensure the central bank's independence...

The Local Sweden

Swedish central bank seeks billions to restore capital base

Sweden's central bank, the Riksbank, said it requires an injection of 80 billion kronor ($7.2 billion) to restore its capital base after makin...

In the US the Fed is allowed to count their negative balance as an *asset* because they can use it to offset profits they would theoretically be required to pay the US Treasury in the future. ht @Lyn Alden

Lyn Alden

How the Fed "Went Broke"

For the first time in modern history, the Fed is operating at a loss. This article explores what that means for savers and investors.

In March the tax payers in Sweden will get a request for the equivalent of $7B to fund the Riksbank. This may be a a hard sell when inflation is running hot, interest rates are high, home prices are down and the economy is generally faultering. Keep in mind also that the government will need to issue bonds to pay to recapitalize the Riksbank at a time when the Swedish Krona is at an all time low. Coincidentally, a few weeks ago the Riksbank pledge to spend up to $8B USD in reserves to prop up the Krona by March.

Hedging of foreign exchange reserves

In September 2023, the Riksbank decided to hedge part of the foreign exchange reserves to reduce its financial risks. Over a period of four months,...

These two programs taken together do not install a feeling of bank independence to my mind. Has anyone seen this discussed elsewhere? I would love to read more analysis about how these moves by the Riksbank will interact. Any thoughts on this @Rune Østgård ?

I also like their ChatBTC bot. I had a question about nonces related to the new simple taproot channels BLIP and how it might intereact with splicing. I think the answer was good and the fact that it also gives you references to verify the summary is fantastic.

ChatBTC

A conversational AI based on technical bitcoin sources

from Jonas: "Introducing TLDR; summarized posts from the bitcoin-dev and lightning-dev mailing lists. TDLR exists to make it easier to engage with high signal technical bitcoin and lightning discussions."

Bitcoin TLDR

Bitcoin tech mailing list summaries at your fingertips

Some big news for taprooty PSBTs!

[bitcoin-dev] Proposed BIP for MuSig2 PSBT Fields - Andrew Chow

Hi All, I've written up a BIP draft for MuSig2 PSBT fields. It can be viewed at https://github.com/achow101/bips/blob/musig2-psbt/bip-musig2-psbt.mediawiki. This is based on this gist from Sanket: https://gist.github.com/sanket1729/4b525c6049f4d9e034d27368c49f28a6. There are a few notable differences: - The participant pubkeys field is keyed by only the aggregate xonly key - Participant pubkeys are compressed pubkeys rather than xonly. Andrew

Splices are back on the menu! upgrade now to take advantage of low tx fees to consolidate your channels. #phoenixwallet

Excited to see Carl Dong's development of a new kind of VPN:

Obscura

Obscura VPN | Privacy that’s more than a promise

Available for Mac. Download today.

Illuminati is a classic board game from Steve Jackson Games, highly recommend.

"Describing the process, he said the gangs would convert their dirty cash to bitcoin, then used the cryptocurrency to pay people who sold fake streams on Spotify, which is a Swedish company."

The Local Sweden

How Swedish criminal gangs allegedly launder money through Spotify

Sweden's criminal gangs are using fake Spotify streams to launder money, according to a report by the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

I want to know more about how these gangs converted their dirty cash to bitcoin in Sweden, and why the Spotify step was needed at all. Seems like a cumbersome mechanism.

Splice on Phoenix out of beta!

Exciting news from ACINQ! "Introducing the new Phoenix, a 3rd generation self-custodial Lightning wallet. Splicing changes the game: single dynamic channel, no more 1% fee on inbound liquidity, better predictability and control, trustless swaps."

ACINQ | Introducing the new Phoenix

ACINQ is a Bitcoin technology company with a focus on the Lightning Network.

#Bitcoin #LightningNetwork