A bi-weekly news show informing you on the latest in Bitcoin, privacy and open source tech hosted by Ungovernables, Max and Q.

AOB

NEWS

India orders GitHub to take down BitChat's source code; Internet Freedom Foundation calls it unconstitutional - TFTC: India BitChat GitHub takedown, I4C, IFF / CoinDesk
Fourth Circuit says border agents can hand-search your phone with zero suspicion, as a man is prosecuted for a duress-wipe - EFF: Fourth Circuit says border agents can search your phone by hand, no suspicion required / TechCrunch: US accuses American of wiping his phone with a duress password at the border
Senate Democrats kill the CLARITY Act before recess; the developer safe harbor (Section 604) stalls with it - TFTC: CLARITY Act rejected, Bitcoin ownership surpasses gold
State Department launches a "Freedom Tech" program with BPI, Palantir, and Anduril as founding partners - Bitcoin Magazine: State Department tech program with Bitcoin
Block open-sources Buzz: a Nostr-native, keypair-identity workspace for humans and AI agents - LINK
BIP-110 approaches its mandatory signaling window with support under 1%, and enforcing nodes staring at a minority fork - TFTC: BIP-110 enters mandatory signaling window below 1% hashrate

Bitcoin core / protocol

btcd v0.26.2 - 2026-07-25
- Security-hardening for the Go full node: stricter PSBT/input parsing, Schnorr and WIF validation, rejection of malformed bech32, tighter inbound admission.

Hardware / signing

Keystone 3 v3.0.0 - 2026-07-21
- Major firmware across all variants of the airgapped open-source signer: reworked passcode/recovery flow, stronger validation, upgraded security policies. Reproducible with published checksums.
Trezor Suite v26.7.2 - 2026-07-22
- Firmware security updates plus a lower 0.2 sat/vB minimum fee and cancel-pending-transaction support.
Nunchuk 2.7.1 - 2026-07-16
- Collaborative-custody multisig wallet. 2.7.0 (07-15) added self-custodial USDT on Liquid and Trezor Bluetooth support; 2.7.1 is bug fixes on top. On-lens for multisig self-custody.
Bitkey App 2026.11.0 - 2026-07-14
- Block's consumer hardware wallet. Release highlights its Emergency Access (recovery/inheritance) path; full notes hosted off-repo at bitkey.world/releases.

Lightning

Core Lightning v26.06.6 - 2026-07-22
- Patch release (26.06.3-5 pulled over broken PyPI publishing). Now rejects channels reusing an existing funding outpoint, closing a channel-security edge case.
LNDg v1.11.0 - 2026-07-26
- Self-hosted LND dashboard: peer-offline reporting, auto re-index on data migration, historic failed-HTLC data via API. Update logging config on upgrade.
Zeus v13.1.3 - 2026-07-21
- Point release / version bump on the 13.1 line for the self-custodial Lightning wallet.
LNbits v1.5.6 - 2026-07-15
- Minor patch on 1.5.5 (payments extension-field refactor and fixes) for the self-hosted Lightning accounts system.
Lightning Labs Wavelength - 2026-07-21
- A toolkit for adding self-custodial bitcoin (and stablecoin) payments to any application, designed to create the best developer experience for humans and agents.

Ecash

Cashu TS v5.0.0-rc.5 - 2026-07-23
- RC for the major v5 of the reference TS Cashu library: NUT-18 payment requests (PaymentRequestBuilder), mint-preference support, hardened P2PK validation, integer fee math. Foundational for ecash wallets.
Nutshell 0.20.3 - 2026-07-22
- Reference mint/wallet: Pay-to-Blinded-Key (lock ecash to a receiver without revealing their pubkey to the mint), a Spark L2 backend, and a false-UNPAID melt-race fix. DB migration, back up first.
Fedimint v0.12.0-beta.0 - 2026-07-23
- Beta pre-release of the federated ecash / community-custody protocol. Flagged unstable, no upgrade guarantee. "In the pipeline," not production. (Admin UI: Fedimint UI v0.7.4, adds arm64 image.)

On-chain privacy / coinjoin

Wasabi Wallet v2.8.1 - 2026-07-22
- Now receives to Taproot addresses by default (a real "state of the network" adoption nudge, four-plus years post-activation), adds Linux AppImage, on top of 2.8.0's serverless P2P filter sync.
Ashigaru Desktop v1.1.2 - 2026-07-25
- Whirlpool coinjoin QoL: live Tor/Electrum status, one-click connect, faster startup, self-clearing coordinator banner.
JoinMarket-NG 0.34.2 - 2026-07-20
- Actively-maintained modern fork of JoinMarket: safe expired-fidelity-bond handling, correct frozen-UTXO reporting, multi-wallet RPC routing.
Bitcoin Safe 2.1.1 - 2026-07-20
- Multisig/single-sig desktop wallet: UI fixes and improved Debian build reproducibility.

P2P / no-KYC

Bisq 1.10.4 - 2026-07-24
- Mandatory security update for the decentralized no-KYC exchange (audit findings): signed DAO block providers, stricter blind-vote/dispute validation, re-enabled BSQ swaps. Required to keep trading.
Bull Bitcoin 6.12.4 - 2026-07-24
- Bug-fix for the no-account self-custodial app (iOS startup-lockup fix). The feature release was 6.12.2 (UTXO/coin-control, Coldcard NFC, BitBox02 Nova BLE, sub-1 sat/vB).
Vexl v1.45.1 - 2026-07-21
- Point release of the contacts-based no-KYC P2P trading app (small fixes).
Peach Bitcoin 0.69.0 (381) - 2026-07-23
- Latest build of the no-KYC P2P Bitcoin marketplace (rolling 0.69.0 build increments 379/380/381 across the fortnight). Verify the build-tag slug before publishing (parentheses in the tag).

Self-hosting / infra

BTCPay Server v2.4.1 - 2026-07-23
- Self-hosted no-KYC payment processor: BIP-329 label import, editable invoice comments, refund-email triggers, RTL UI, restored Boltcard payments.