This week in the world of Bitcoin Wallets:
  • Sparrow Wallet v1.7.0 has been released. This Version is by far the No.1 of this newsletter, and one update I am personally very excited about. You can now run Sparrow Desktop on your Raspberry Pi which is great by it's own. To run the coinjoin implementation whirpool with Sparrow, you have to run the app 24/7 on your desktop pc. In some use cases, this might be inconvenient. Especially if you are accustomed to the whirlpool CLI by RoninDojo. Good thing here is, that you are able to keep the mix in your Samourai Wallet going, even if you have closed the Android App. All the leveraging is done in the background by your RoninDojo Node on a Single Board Computer. So now you can mix with Sparrow on your low power Raspi. But Craig Raw, the developer of Sparrow has gone even further. You don't need a desktop environment any more. A functional sibling has emerged. The Sparrow Terminal. You can now install the Wallet on a CLI only host. This includes all node implementations and Openoms already showcased it on a Raspiblitz. Where all this development leads to, is the implemention of the Sparrow Server Daemon in a future release. If I am understanding this correctly, it will be soon possible, much like the earlier described Whirlpool CLI by RoninDojo, to run Sparrow in the background 24/7 on a remote machine and connect to it via dektop if you wish to. The additional possibility to assign aliases to different server configuration also supports the Sparrow Server Daemon. Amazing! Another thing worth mentioning, is the added feature for cancelling transactions.
  • Wasabi Wallet 2.0.2 is out. They optimized Tor connectivity, which is very important for private and reasonable fast and effective communication. Also a privacy progress feature was implemented. I haven't tested it, nor am I planning on doing so.
  • bitkit Wallet has been introduced by Synonym, John Carvalho's company. It's somewhat a very "cooperate" approach to a Bitcoin/Lightning Wallet reminding me a bit of Revolut. I don't mean this in a bad way. The UI is somewhat account based. Could be a mass compatible approach. I will definetly testdrive it further in the future.
  • Bitcoin Beach Wallet added their Stablesats functionality. So besides the SimpleBitcoinWallet fork Standard Sats, this is now to my knowledge, the second release of a Bitcoin native Wallet with exposure to a synthetic USD/EUR Shitcoin. I don't want to go into great detail, but with both apps, you're opening short positions on bitcoin to hedge against btc short term volatility. I personally don't need and don't want to short bitcoin, but I can accept usecases, where you're living on a bitcoin standard, but have to pay in Dollar or Euros. The emerging incentives with Fiat on Bitcoin are unclear to me. We will certainly see in the future, how this turnes out.
If I missed something, feel free to reply. Constructive criticism is always welcome and if this article was of value to you, share some sats!
Peace,
Meister Eder