26 November  2024 · Block Height 872041 · Bitcoin Price $98.5K

What caught our eye this week

The Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) is holding certain imports of Antminer ASICs at ports of entry to the United States, Blockspace has learned.

According to seven U.S.-based bitcoin mining companies who spoke with Blockspace on the condition of anonymity, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has allegedly requested the CBP to hold certain shipments of Bitmain ASIC miners at ports of entry. The CBP has held some of these shipments for two months, and the hold ups are “happening nationwide,” said one source, including at ports in San Francisco and Detroit. 

The imports in question are for Bitmain’s Antminer S21 and T21 series, the latest series of ASIC miners from Bitmain. Sources claimed that the FCC and CBP are not targeting other ASIC manufacturers like MicroBT or Canaan. Beyond revealing that the FCC requested the freeze, the CBP did not provide a specific reason for the action, nor a timeline for how long it would hold the shipments, to the affected parties. One source said they have not only been ignoring the company’s requests for information, but have been charging a daily holding fee now over $200,000

One source, whose shipment holds “are now approaching months,” mentioned that “CBP holds extending beyond 30 days with no clear requests of the Importer of Record (IOR) are beyond usual service standards and extremely rare.”

News

US Treasury’s sanctions against Tornado Cash ruled unlawful

The Fifth Circuit held that the US Treasury’s sanctions against Tornado Cash smart contracts are unlawful. These smart contracts must now be removed from the sanctions list and US persons will once again be allowed to use this privacy-protecting protocol. Tornado Cash developer Alexei Pertsev is currently serving a 5 year sentence for “money laundering $1.2 billion” as determined by the Dutch government.

Microstrategy buys another $5.4 billion of Bitcoin

Microstrategy (MSTR) announced it had completed the purchase of another 55,000 Bitcoin on Monday. The company used the proceeds from the sale of it’s convertible notes to fund the purchase, bringing it’s total treasury to 438,480 bitcoin.

Yet another way to emulate covenants on Bitcoin (without a soft fork)

Jeremy Rubin published a paper on a way to emulate covenants (such as those enabled by OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY). Basically, an oracle watches transactions on Bitcoin and will only sign the transaction if it’s valid through a covenant. That oracle’s ability to sign is checked by a BitVM bridge.

Chart Infographic of the week

Bitcoin’s Mayer Multiple signals “buy” – The Mayer Multiple is an oscillator calculated as the ratio between price, and the 200-day moving average. The 200-day MA is a widely recognized indicator for establish macro bull or bear bias.