Bitcoin news this week has taken a turn for the strange with connections to a high profile leak of nude photos of celebrities (albeit obliquely). Charlie Shrem, former CEO of BitInstant, will be pleading guilty to a lesser charge on Thursday stemming from his alleged connection to now defunct Silk Road. Also, The Apache Software Foundation is now accepting bitcoin donations to support Open Source Software projects.

Benjamin Lawsky’s New York “BitLicense” proposed regulation continues to receive criticism from the Bitcoin industry with executives from OKCoin, BTCChina, Xapo, and Kraken piling on. Coin Academy announced the launch of a web page this week housing courses on Bitcoin for beginners and advanced as well as curated collections on alt-currencies.

Finally, Blockchain has announced that Andreas Antonopoulos will be shifting roles from Chief Security Officer to become an advisor to the board.

Celebgate and Bitcoin

Over the weekend, a number of celebrities had their accounts ransacked by hackers and photos allegedly taken. While hacking isn’t an uncommon thing in in this highly connected world, this incident appears to have intersected with bitcoin when hackers took to 4chan and began to offer explicit photos taken from celebrity phones for BTC.

Alyssa Hertig at CryptocoinsNews reports that while it seems that the original hacker may have released the photos for free on 4chan initially a Bitcoin Address was left behind as well for tips. (The source, however, is a deleted Reddit link.) Reports as to the original tip address differ between news outlets.

While the original leak of photos may have been release for free, however, it has led to a spate of copycat offers of release for bitcoin.

The Daily Dot is running a story that includes information about one such copycat: Bryan Hamade, a 27-year-old Web developer from Lawrenceville, Georgia. Shortly after the first leak, he attempted to cash in by offering the leaked photos for a bitcoin fee, but has since been hounded by users convinced he is the original leaker.

A charge that he vehemently denied in a quote to BuzzFeed on Monday.

“I am not behind this. It was so stupid — I saw a lot of people posting the actual leaks and bitcoin addresses and I’ve read a lot about bitcoin and how they are valuable and I thought, Oh cool I’ll get free bitcoins,” he said.

Since Hamade’s post there have been dozens further copycats appearing on 4chan attempting to rake in bitcoins by releasing further alleged photos.

The Apache Software Foundation now accepting bitcoin donations

Tuesday this week, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced that it would begin accepting bitcoin donations.

The ASF is best known for supporting the development of the Apache web HTTP server, as well as over two hundred other Open Source projects such as Hadoop, CouchDB.

The ASF’s press release was extremely detailed as to exactly why it chose to begin accepting bitcoin donations. The decision, it reads, was in response to a request received August 26. Within only 48 hours of opening a Bitcoin wallet the address received more than 90 transactions totaling in about 5.35915909 BTC—more than US$2,600 at today’s rate.

“Accepting Bitcoin allows donors to The Apache Software Foundation the benefit of digital currency exchanges, no matter where they reside,” said Upayavira, ASF Vice President of Fundraising.

Donators interested in tipping the ASF some bitcoins can send it to the ASF’s Bitcoin address (Blockchain.info link.) For other ways to donate, or information on donating to the ASF, visit the Foundation’s donation information page.

The wallet now reflects over 6.32 BTC.

New York BitLicense continues to take heat from Bitcoin Industry

The proposed “BitLicense” Bitcoin regulation in New York continues to take criticism from numerous members of the Bitcoin industry this week. While previous comments from the industry seemed somewhat sanguine, newer critiques continue to dig deeper and paint a dark picture of New York’s participation in the future of Bitcoin commerce should the regulation go forward as written.

“The fundamental reason is that the current version of the BitLicence has too many restrictions and constraints,“ writes CTO of OKCoin, Changpeng Zhao, in a joint-letter with BTCChina. He added that these restrictions stifle operations of not just OKCoin but development of Bitcoin-related industry interests as well.

Changpeng Zhao is not alone in his criticism, in a recent interview with SiliconAngle Jesse Powell, Co-founder and CEO of Kraken, expressed similar misgivings.

“New York’s first attempt [at regulation] was way over the top and impossible to comply with,” says Powell. He opined that the regulation would be unrealistic for any startup business to manage to comply with, “we’re talking a million dollars a year to comply in a business that might make a few hundred thousand.”

However, Powell is hopeful that the New York Department of Finance will come back with a much lighter and less burdensome regulatory framework in the future. Or, he feels that New York will simply be cut out of Bitcoin commerce in the future as startups begin to spring up and avoid the state for its impossibly burdensome regulation.

Xapo, a full-service Bitcoin wallet system, has also weighed in by echoing the thoughts of Circle CEO Jeremy Alliare inspiring this title: “[Xapo] will have no choice but to block New York customers from accessing services” and Why New York Should Care.”

CEO of Xapo, Wences Casares, comes right out and says it, “New York’s proposed BitLicense in its current form is the wrong form of regulation and in fact poses a threat to New York and New York consumers.”

Charlie Shrem to plead guilty to lesser charges

Former CEO of BitInstant Charlie Shrem will plead guilty on Thursday to a lesser charge of aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmission, according to The Wall Street Journal. Earlier this year, Shrem and alleged partner Robert Faiella were arrested and harged with numerous financial crimes stemming from operational connections with the now defunct Silk Road.

They were both charged with with conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

In spite of his arrest and charges pending, Shrem has remained active in the bitcoin community, although shortly after his arrest he resigned from The Bitcoin Foundation, of which he is co-founder and at the time was Vice President.

Coin Academy: Because accessible information on Bitcoin is better

Coin Academy announced the launch of its web academy service on Monday, September 1 published at CoinAcademy.co. The academy seeks to house numerous online courses that cover everything from the basics of Bitcoin, to advanced understanding of security and internal mechanisms—and also includes collections of curated information will also include information on alt-currencies such as Litecoin, NXT, Dogecoin, Ripple, and Peercoin.

The Coin Academy website was founded jointly by  Stephen DeMeulenaere, an expert on alternative currency systems and sharing economies, and Ric Shreves, a web developer who writes on open source technology.

“Until the launch of Coin Academy, there was no single place people where could learn about digital currencies,” says Shreves.

While it’s true a few tutorial sites exist current around the Internet, many people may find themselves lost amidst a mire of different sources attempting to educate or simply sell products, including the Bitcoin Wiki and Blockchain’s Bitcoin.com information portal.

DeMeulenaere and Shreves hope to add to these sources of information with a more academic presentation style to reach out to an audience that otherwise might not read the above two sources.

Coin Academy currently publishes three free courses: Digital Currency Ownership—Before You Begin, Bitcoin for Merchants, and Bitcoin for Everyone. As well as a full suite of curated collections on numerous alt-currencies.

While the content is free, users still must register at the site to access the full courses and curated content.

Antonopoulos becomes Blockchain’s board advisor

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is changing roles at Blockchain from Chief Security Officer to advisor to the Board. The press release about this change expresses great gratitude for Antonopoulos’s work as CSO, but notes that his numerous responsibilities outside of security at Blockchain’s growing establishment means he needs to be in a role that better fits his needs.

Antonopoulos joined Blockchain eight months ago in January when he was appointed as CSO.

Primarily responsibility for security engineering will remain with Ben Reeves, Blockchain’s Founder and CTO; and the company anticipates needing to build a full-time security engineering team to keep up with demand.