Bitcoin News - May 2019
This month we saw a new peak of 471k transactions in 24 hours, the release of Bitcoin Core 0.18, new proposals for Taproot, Schnorr signatures and Erlay, the removal of the upper limit on Lightning Network channels was tested and much more.
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 May 2019
Adoption
- 471k transactions on the blockchain in 24 hours (2 May)
- An Uber driver in New York accepting bitcoin (2 May)
- The Wall Street Journal includes Bitcoin in its financial asset class overview (5 May)
- Bitcoin added 150k daily active addresses since the start of April (10 May)
- The mempool compared to the number of confirmed transactions between the all-time price high and now (11 May)
- A custodial payment processor now allows you to transact with major US retailers (13 May)
- Someone gets excited about buying a pen on Amazon using bitcoin (15 May)
- A Bitcoin ATM at Tbilisi airport in Georgia (18 May)
- An update on Bitcoin in Venezuela (19 May)
- Over 100 merchants accept Lightning payments in Arnhem, the Netherlands (21 May)
- 80% of college students chose $1 when given the option between that and 1 BTC (21 May)
Development
- Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 is released (2 May)
- An overview of what is new in Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 (3 May)
- A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal draft for Taproot on the Bitcoin developer mailing list (6 May)
- A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal draft for Schnorr Signatures on the Bitcoin developer mailing list (7 May)
- lnd v.0.6.1-beta has been released (10 May)
- Bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille unveils two Bitcoin Improvement Proposals to improve privacy (7 May)
- Bandwidth-efficient transaction relay for Bitcoin (28 May)
- The next major release of lnd will integrate Watchtowers (29 May)
- The first 1 btc Lightning channel is live as developers test removal of the channel limit (29 May)
- Ledger finally adds support for native-Segwit, Bech32 addresses, which lowers fees (29 May)
Security
- 7000 btc is hacked from Binance (8 May)
- Binance’s CEO realises he can’t roll back the blockchain to reclaim stolen funds (8 May)
- A reminder to keep your cryptocurrency off exchanges (11 May)
- A warning for a Trezor phishing site (15 May)
- The details of a SIM port hack that cost someone his bitcoin (20 May)
- Another Proof-of-Work-based Blockchain suffers from a 51% attack (25 May)
Mining
- Bitcoin miners clarify that they use clean energy at a Fidelity event (7 May)
- Bitcoin miners are earning 8x the fees of all other cryptocurrencies combined (13 May)
- It is 1 year until another halvening of the Bitcoin block reward (20 May)
- A discussion on using the heat from Bitcoin mining for water desalinisation (29 May)
Business
- Fidelity is slowly rolling out cryptocurrency trading within a few weeks (6 May)
- GoTenna partners with Blockstream to make using Bitcoin without an Internet connection easier (11 May)
- eBay hints at bitcoin acceptance through ads (13 May)
- Microsoft is building a second-layer decentralised identity solution on top of Bitcoin (14 May)
- Blockchain the company is still making their wallet users overpay on fees (16 May)
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on implementing the Lightning Network (20 May)
Research
- 10.5M bitcoins have not moved in a year (18 May)
- Over 732k Bitcoin addresses now own more than 1 BTC (19 May)
- Improving the scalability of routing algorithms while preserving decentralisation (28 May)
Education
- A simple explainer of Taproot, a technical upgrade coming to Bitcoin (7 May)
- Concerns over getting your bank account closed over buying bitcoin in India (12 May)
- Someone requests popular YouTube channel Kurzgesagt to make an educational video about Bitcoin (13 May)
- An overview of links for people who are new to bitcoin (14 May)
- Veriblock cannot afford blockspace in Bitcoin to secure its own blockchain, since fees have risen (16 May)
- A Bitcoin developer addresses criticism on Bitcoin by YouTuber kurzgesagt (20 May)
- The full 60 Minutes Video on Bitcoin’s Wild Ride for ~12M viewers (20 May)
- A simple explainer of Submarine Swaps on the Lightning Network (23 May)
- A guide on how to build a cheap Bitcoin node (25 May)
Regulation & Politics
- The US Justice department seizes part of Bitfinex’ “missing” $850M and makes arrests (2 May)
- A US congressman partially sponsored by an illegal gambling facilitator calls for a bill to ban all cryptocurrencies (9 May)
- 2020 US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Cryptocurrency and the White House (17 May)
- Macedonia is the only country in Europe which has made Bitcoin illegal as a payment method (20 May)
Archeology (Financial Incumbents)
- BAKKT will start accepting users for testing in July (13 May)
- 1 Satoshi is now worth more than 1 Iranian Rial, 1 Vietnamese Dong or 1 Indonesian Rupiah (16 May)
- A Wells Fargo banker helped launder millions for the Sinaloa Cartel (17 May)
- If you bought bitcoin at its peak in 2017 in Argentina, you would have retained more value than holding pesos (21 May)
Price & Trading
- The Bitcoin market cap goes back over $100B (3 May)
- The Bitcoin price rises $1000 in under 48 hours, to over $7k (11 May)
- Gemini exchange removes some trading functionality and increases fees (12 May)
- Bitcoin trade volume reaches an all-time-high (13 May)
Fun & Other
- Grayscale releases its new “Drop Gold” Bitcoin investment advertising campaign (1 May)
- The New York Stock Exchange chairman on Bitcoin (3 May)
- Someone suggests to mass search “what is Bitcoin” to trigger trading bots (3 May)
- A reminder of a prediction of something like Bitcoin in 1984 (6 May)
- An article by Jameson Lopp explaining why Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto (9 May)
- People appreciate that Satoshi disappeared from Bitcoin early on (10 May)
- Bitcoin has been declared dead 355 times (12 May)
- Shark Tank member challenges the case for Bitcoin (14 May)
- Asking Warren Buffet about cryptocurrency is like asking for a taxi driver’s view on Uber (14 May)
- TD Ameritrade says tens of thousands of their clients are interested in cryptocurrency (15 May)
- SpaceX launches ~12k satellites to low earth orbit to provide global high-speed WiFi, which could help node infrastructure and accessibility to bitcoin (16 May)
- A reminder to take care of yourself when diving down the Bitcoin rabbit hole (17 May)
- A sportsman in the US gets his request to be paid in btc denied (17 May)
- Someone creates a 1-pager financial elevator pitch for Bitcoin (17 May)
- Laszlo “Bitcoin Pizza Guy” Hanyecz is brought back up in the 60 Minutes episode on Bitcoin (17 May)
- A Magic Internet Money Crossstitch (21 May)
- Someone donates 14 btc to Bitcoin.org (28 May)
Sam Wouters
Sam is a Bitcoin & Blockchain speaker. He has been learning about Bitcoin & blockchain every day for years and wants to use his knowledge to help others understand and use these complex topics.