GM, bitcoiner — October 19, 2026

gm

Your morning Bitcoin brief: Mt. Gox repayment deadline slips to 2027, Fulcrum 2.1.4 speeds up some history lookups by up to 5x–10x, Thai police arrest alleged boss of a $74M crypto laundering ring and other bitcoin news

## Network Stats

As of Oct 19, 2026, 5:01 AM EDT

MARKET
  Price       $82,772  (+1.33%)
  24h volume  $25.4 bn
  Dominance   60.2%
  Sats / $    1,208

NETWORK
  Block       #972,124
  Hashrate    1,020 EH/s
  Difficulty  -1.40%
  Retarget    11 days
  Halving     541 days  (62.9%)

MEMPOOL
  Fee    1 sat/vB
  TX     44,921
  Size   27.6 MB
  Queue  28 blocks

LIGHTNING
  Capacity  3,754 BTC
  Channels  32,518

## Regulation & Policy

### Mt. Gox creditors face another year of waiting as repayment deadline slips to 2027

An Oct. 16 notice cites unfinished creditor procedures and payment-processing issues, and assigns no individual distribution dates. cryptoslate.com

## Institutions & Treasuries

### Saylor teases ‘more orange’ after outlining a $100 trillion bitcoin vision

At ParaFi Investor Day 2026, Strategy founder Michael Saylor argued that bank lending, tokenized securities and bitcoin-backed credit could eventually support a $100 trillion financial system. news.bitcoin.com

## Funds & ETFs

### Bitcoin and Ether ETFs shed $549M as October Ether outflows near $1B

US spot Ether ETFs have recorded around $955 million in net outflows so far in October, while Bitcoin funds extended their weekly withdrawal streak to two weeks. cointelegraph.com

## Technology & Development

### Fulcrum 2.1.4 speeds up some history lookups by up to 5x–10x

Maintenance release: Storage::getHistory, behind subscriptions and history RPCs, is 5x–10x faster for uncached lookups, such as after a cold start. A new history_lookup_threads setting controls it; the default suits almost all systems. github.com

### Adam Gibson explores variable payout amounts for BABE, as applied to Lichen

BABE’s approach targets witness encryption for Groth16 proof verification, which would let a coin on bitcoin be unlocked only by someone holding a valid SNARK proof. delvingbitcoin.org eprint.iacr.org

### MyNode v0.3.50 released with LND v0.21.4 and optional automatic upgrades

According to @mynodebtc, the update also bundles Lightning Terminal v0.17.6, Alby Hub v1.24.1, LNDg v1.11.1 and Canary v1.7.0, plus timezone control, a SMART drive health test with full filesystem check, and marketplace filters and badges. x.com x.com

## Mining

### Block 972,000 leaves fewer than 900,000 BTC to be mined, @unchained notes

@unchained says the milestone was easy to predict for October 2026, calling bitcoin “so reliable”. x.com unchained.com

## Security & Privacy

### Rage Weekly 42/26: a roundup on financial surveillance

The Rage’s weekly linkdump collects the best content on financial surveillance and beyond. therage.co

### @MagicalTux is working on a cheap device to check a Ledger for spy implants without opening it

@MagicalTux says such detection is possible without cracking the device open and plans to publish the PCB and specs so anyone can build the tester; the device is still in development. x.com x.com

## Bitcoin Rap Sheet

### Thai police arrest Chinese national allegedly behind $74M crypto laundering ring

Thai Immigration Police detained Wu Chaoshuai, who entered Thailand on a tourist visa in 2019 and had taken action to evade arrest. He allegedly led a ring that moved over $74 million for a transnational criminal organization. news.bitcoin.com