Bitcoin News - March 2019

This month we saw SegWit adoption rise to over 50%, the Lightning Network passed 30k channels, 7k nodes and 1k btc in capacity. The number of transactions per block at all-time highs and of course Bitcoin becoming an official scrabble word.

What the monthly news is about:

For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popular/relevant/interesting stories in r/Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month.

A recap of Bitcoin in March 2019

Adoption

• Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square shows off his Bitcoin full node (2 Mar)
• The Lightning Network passes 30k channels and has nearly 7k nodes (3 Mar)
• Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square buys a Bitcoin hardware wallet (8 Mar)
• The North Korean government reportedly owns $650M in cryptocurrency (8 Mar)
• Bitcoin is an official scrabble word (15 Mar)
• The Lightning network now has over 1k btc in capacity (16 Mar)
• A discussion on using bitcoin on Venezuela as the electricity was down (18 Mar)
• The Tor Project has started accepting bitcoin directly (19 Mar)
• Someone buys a sandwich in Bern using the Lightning Network (26 Mar)
• SegWit adoption is at an all-time-high of near 50% (27 Mar)
• ZebPay becomes the first exchange to add Lightning payments for its users (28 Mar)
• The average number of transactions per block is at an all-time-high of 2700 (31 Mar)

Development

• Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, will support 3-4 developers to work on Bitcoin Core free of commercial interests (20 Mar)
• The alpha release of Lightning Loop, a non-custodial service that makes it easier to receive bitcoin on Lightning (20 Mar)
• Blockstream announces its new Blockstream Green wallet (20 Mar)
• Eclair mobile now supports receiving Lightning payments on mainnet (28 Mar)
• A plugin to accept Bitcoin Lightning payments at WooCommerce stores (31 Mar)

Security

• The director of Institutional Sales at Coinbase states their previous blockchain analysis provider was selling customer data to 3rd parties (3 Mar)

Mining

• A small bitcoin mining operation with solar energy at home (12 Mar)
• On a Canadian oil field, natural gas with nowhere to go powers a bitcoin-mining operation (29 Mar)

Business

• Some people delete their Coinbase accounts to protest their acquisition of a hacking team that sold spyware to human rights abusing governments (2 Mar)
• US retail company Kroger abandons Visa due to high fees and considers integrating bitcoin’s Lightning network (4 Mar)
• Coinbase says it will transition out its ex-hacking team staff to appease users, without clarifying the issues with sold customer data (5 Mar)
• UnionBank in the Philippines adds a Bitcoin ATM in its flagship branch at the central business district (8 Mar)
• Bitmain is facing multiple lawsuits after misleading investors (10 Mar)
• According to a Fidelity executive there are hundreds of institutions interested in cryptocurrency investments (12 Mar)
• Switzerland’s biggest online retailer starts accepting bitcoin (19 Mar)
• A company is developing a cryptocurrency wallet accessible through WhatsApp (25 Mar)
• As promised Gemini finally implements native SegWit support (27 Mar)
• A Bitcoin Suisse advertisement at Zurich airport (28 Mar)
• Japan’s biggest electric railway and subway operator is considering cryptocurrency integration (29 Mar)
• A cryptocurrency bank in Kiev (29 Mar)

Education

• Nick Szabo on how Bitcoin ensures independence of money from politics (1 Mar)
• A story book about Bitcoin (19 Mar)
• A 200+ page PDF introducing the Lightning Network and BOLT (20 Mar)
• An article on how market cap is misleading and what Bitcoin’s market dominance really is (22 Mar)
• An introduction to the Lightning Network for non-tech savvy people (27 Mar)

Regulation & Politics

• 98.3% of Money laundering cases don’t involve cryptocurrency according to Japan’s police (1 Mar)
• Thailand’s SEC clarifies its stance on cryptocurrencies (1 Mar)
• Andrew Yang is a Bitcoin-friendly US presidential candidate (16 Mar)

Archeology (Financial Incumbents)

• Deutsche Bank and Citigroup are part of a $9B Russian money laundering operation (5 Mar)
• The Central Bank of Germany admits that credit is created by devaluing the currency of everyone else (14 Mar)
• Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles found guilty by Tokyo’s court and sentenced to 2.5 years in prison (15 Mar)
• Henry Ford on what people would do if they understood our financial system (28 Mar)
• Ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan explains how the US can pay any debt because it can infinitely print money (28 Mar)
• JPMorgan is the top job poster on Indeed.com for “Bitcoin”, “Blockchain” and “Cryptocurrency” jobs (31 Mar)
• One of Sweden’s largest banks, Swedbank, may have been used to launder $5.8B over the course of a decade (31 Mar)

Fun & Other

• A proposal for the symbol of a satoshi (3 Mar)
• An overview of proposals for the symbol of a satoshi (4 Mar)
• Someone posts what they think Brock Pierce has planned for Mt. Gox (4 Mar)
• Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter & Square, is buying $10k in bitcoin each week (5 Mar)
• A discussion on the need for a satoshi symbol (or unit) at all (6 Mar)
• A video of gambling using the Lightning Network (6 Mar)
• An economic historian who thought Bitcoin was a delusion now admits he was very wrong (7 Mar)
• Someone makes a headline-only Bitcoin news overview (11 Mar)
• Someone’s grandma is saved from getting scammed for $2000 by a bitcoiner (13 Mar)
• A huge Bitcoin B ATM in Bucharest (14 Mar)
• Bitcoin street artist in paris receives 1 btc in donations (20 Mar)
• Someone buys btc for their 14 year old daughter after she earns her first paycheck (23 Mar)
• People use Lightning and the Blockstream satellites to send “immutable news” to oppressed and authoritarian areas (23 Mar)
• Mining bitcoin on a GPU in 2014 (28 Mar)
• People discuss why they invest in bitcoin (29 Mar)
• The Genesis Block Bar in Kyoto (31 Mar)