In the wake of MtGox becoming an empty, smoking crater, bitcoin value plummeted from the $800 band all the way down to below $500—but it seems now that the news has sunk in, and MtGox is essentially dead, the value is recovering once again and is flirting with the high $600s. In spite of all the bad news for the bitcoin exchange market, this would seem to start March off on a positive note.

MtGox is a fundamental part of Bitcoin history, as the long-time exchange-of-note effects on MtGox have led value and adoption for the currency. It’s also been an extremely rocky history filled with security failures, strange drama, and in the end a perilous road to bankruptcy. In spite of the loss of money and BTC from MtGox, the exchange economy has not lost much steam with Bitstamp, BTC-E, and Bitfinex aptly filling the gap.

A pair of hacks have also made the news, Flexcoin “Bitcoin bank” and Poloniex BTC exchange, have both lost BTC. Neither of them are very well known, but their troubles coupled with the MtGox news continue to highlight the need for more stable, security-smart companies in the bitcoin ecology.

Blockchain.info has acquired RTBTC.com, effectively turning ZeroBlock into a full-scale bitcoin forex; and as part of the deal BTC celebrity Clark Moody is joining the team as well.

In what will hopefully be a boost to innovation and ideas, the Texas Bitcoin Conference is right now hosting a Bitcoin Hackathon with over $1 million in prizes—if you’re in the area, perhaps you should go check it out.

Welcome to early March and this is the Bitcoin Weekly.

The repercussions of MtGox’s smouldering ruin

On Friday, MtGox officially filed for bankruptcy in Japan.

While speculation is still wild to exactly how it happened, it is well known that MtGox is missing nearly 750,000 bitcoins, and the bankrupsty document claims that MtGox also lost over 100,000 of its own bitcoins. The bank accounts associated with the failed exchange are also far below the expected amount as deposited by users.

According to the BBC, Japanese officials still uncertain of the nature of MtGox’s demise—with CEO Mark Karpeles and the company claiming the bitcoin loss is from a hacker and many analysts looking at the situation surmising that it is in no small part financial incompetence.

“We still have not had a clear grasp of the situation,” Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said about the situation. “[We] don’t know if it was a crime or just a bankruptcy.”

Since going offline, MtGox has continued to update its front page and even set up a call center in Japan for worried customers. The fallout of MtGox’s demise has led to Karpeles’s resignation from the Bitcoin Foundation board of directors, the Bitcoin Six to call MtGox “insolvent” , and a lot of other drama involving the missing bitcoins.

The fall of MtGox severely depressed the bitcoin market, causing the value to fall as low as $550 on many exchanges; but now the value appears to be rebounding up near $670.

The major world media has seen this as a reason to portray the lawless, Wild Wild West of bitcoin as suffering from a lack of regulation. Financial pundits are often quoted, calling exchanges risky due to how easily the biggest exchange collapsed and took millions of dollars with it.

“The problems at Mt.Gox — lack of strong controls and tight regulation — are systemic to the Bitcoin industry. The reputational damage will spread,” CNN Money quoted former Federal Reserve bank examiner Mark Williams. “What was the largest exchange is now a collapsed tower of toxic sludge.”

However, in an unexpected positive note, Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, seems to believe that the demise of MtGox will help unchain the bitcoin economy and let it innovate freely.

“It’s on the one hand a setback, on the other hand it will cause further improvements in this industry and some more regulatory involvement,” Lawsky told Reuters.

However, Lawsky is also the current force behind the concept of BitLicense in New York. While US regulators may want some sort of handle or control in how bitcoins are used, at this stage its hard to see exactly how such regulation could affect BTC trading or even enforce itself.

Flexcoin “Bitcoin bank” and Poloniex BTC exchange hacked, shut down

Self-styled Bitcoin bank Flexcoin has suffered a massive hack that led to the loss of 896 BTC and has therefore immediately closed its doors.

Flexcoin is shutting down.

On March 2nd 2014 Flexcoin was attacked and robbed of all coins in the hot wallet. The attacker made off with 896 BTC, dividing them into these two addresses:

1NDkevapt4SWYFEmquCDBSf7DLMTNVggdu

1QFcC5JitGwpFKqRDd9QNH3eGN56dCNgy6

As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.

Third-party online wallets, such as Flexcoin, offer a type of convenience that bitcoin users enjoy, but it comes at a risk: someone else holds the private keys to your currency. Many of the services offered for BTC in the early days suffered a great deal of instability and security issues—this included a number of exchanges: Bitomat and Bitcoinica—and it’s still a problem for the Bitcoin service ecosystem today.

Little known exchange Poloniex has announced that all trading has halted in the wake of a BTC theft. According to a release published on BitcoinTalk, 12.3% of the BTC on the exchange was stolen by a hacker employing an exploit.

In all, Poloniex is a very small time exchange and isn’t well known across the bitcoin economy. According to trade volume data published on Cryptocoincharts.info its total trade volume represents barely 0.01% of Bitstamp’s volume. Aside from bitcoins, the exchange also allows the trade of numerous altcoins.

Blockchain.info acquires RTBTC and Clark Moody joins

This week saw Blockchain.info announce its acquisition of RTBTC.com—a move that will upgrade ZeroBlock to a full-fledged bitcoin trading platform capable of tracking and trading across multiple exchanges at once. The service is expected to use a subscription model of $20/mo. and provide a powerful, professional-level of capability.

As part of the deal, Clark Moody will be joining the Blockchain.info team to bolster the product strategy group at ZeroBlock.

“Acquiring RTBTC was a perfect fit for ZeroBlock’s existing product,” said Dan Held, ZeroBlock co-founder and product director at Blockchain.info. “Our features and services are highly complimentary, and we are excited to bring additional functionality to our users.”

“What Clark has built is incredible. RTBTC was developed solely by Clark over the course of two years. We were very happy to have the opportunity to partner with him.”

Happening right now: Texas Bitcoin Conference

Right now in Austin, Texas, today and tomorrow, the Texas Bitcoin Conference is taking place. If you missed full-conference tickets, you can still get in with $350 for full-access or $100 for general admission and access to the Hackathon.

Calling upon developers for “Bitcoin 2.0 Hackathon: Building Next Generation Decentralized Applications & Protocols.”

The hackathon should be a big deal for BTC giving developers and innovators a chance to produce interesting software for Bitcoin while also potentially walking away with some nice reward money. Sponsored by Mastercoin Foundation, Open-Transactions (Monetas), Ethereum, BitAngels, and Ripple the Hackathon is offering teams the chance to compete for over $1 million in prizes.

The rules are pretty straightforward, including that up to 49% of your team may be remote, the hackathon will use Githup as code repository, and all projects must be open source. This means that everything produced at the hackathon could become part of the much larger ecosystem.

Hacking will continue for 29 hours from 10 a.m. CST.