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

AOB

• Freedom.Tech launch reminder
• KeyOS v1.3 now publicly available

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
  
  

RELEASES

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.
• Start9 StartOS v0.4.0 - 2026-07-24
  • Major: a complete ground-up rewrite of StartOS, out of public beta after six years, billed as the "correct architecture for sovereign computing." Note: the only upgrade path is a fresh install (no in-place migration). One of the biggest self-hosting stories of the fortnight.
• Liquid GDK release_0.77.7 - 2026-07-20
  • Blockstream's wallet SDK: libwally + Tor bumps, macOS/iOS cross-compile, single-sig gap-limit fee fix.

Privacy stack / Payjoin

• Payjoin Dev Kit payjoin-cli 1.0.0-rc.1 - 2026-07-23
  • RC for the reference Payjoin CLI, synced to payjoin 1.0.0-rc.6. Signals the v1.0 Payjoin stack nearing release (breaks common-input-ownership heuristics on-chain).

Nostr

• Amber v6.3.0 - 2026-07-20
  • Android Nostr remote signer (keeps your nsec off client apps): grouped/collapsible multi-request approvals, a log-disabling privacy mode, built-in Tor, NIP-65 relay prefetch.

Wallets (self-custody)

• BlueWallet 8.0.1 - 2026-07-21
  • Major v8 line: iOS 26 UI refresh, BC-UR v2 airgap scanning (OneKey/Keystone), Unchained multisig cosigner import, 19 new languages, crypto-js replaced with @noble. Broad user base. Confirm the exact tag slug before publishing.
• Cake Wallet 6.3.2 - 2026-07-24
  • Non-custodial BTC/Monero wallet: home-screen recent history, better OpenAlias/ENS/Unstoppable alias resolution, faster Zcash sync.

EDUCATION

• What Is a UTXO, and Why Does It Matter for Bitcoin Privacy? - 2026-07-25
  • Community explainer thread on Stacker News. The useful part is the top response, which walks through how receive-and-spend patterns fingerprint you and where coinjoin actually helps. Good raw material for a plain-English UTXO segment, which pairs with the Wasabi and Ashigaru releases and gives newer listeners the vocabulary before the coinjoin talk.
• Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #415 - 2026-07-24
  • Two items worth surfacing. Fabian Jahr's draft BIP459 proposes full aggregation of BIP340 schnorr signatures using DahLIAS, combining multiple signatures into a single 64-byte aggregate, with cross-input signature aggregation as a downstream possibility. And libsecp256k1 #1765 adds an optional BIP352 silent-payments module supporting receiver scanning from only the scan secret and spend pubkey, so the spend private key stays offline. Silent payments quietly becoming infrastructure is a good recurring beat.

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