This week in Bitcoin shows a growth happening in the community as well as the pains associated with it.

On the grim front there’s some friction happening with that growth. Fraud continues to be an issue, as it is with any industry, with The Bitcoin Foundation warning about copycat websites attempting to defraud users out of their bitcoins. MasterCard has gone to lengths in Australia to badmouth Bitcoin and request regulations be saddled to “protect consumer interests.”

On the other hand, greater adoption and better policies are appearing amid movers-and-shakers as well. Blockchain.info has now implemented a proper TOR .onion address to reduce the possibility of hijacks when people anonymously browse the popular Bitcoin wallet. NCR Silver customers show a clear preference for Bitcoin over Apple Pay. And an executive from the Ronald McDonald House charity went on Reddit to do an AMA about accepting bitcoin donations.

Finally, ChangeTip has been having an amazing few months (with a bitcoin tipping revolution hitting its stride) that have culminated recently in $3.5 million in seed money.

Bitcoin’s market value popped up a little bit lately from a low around November 20 at $350 and now resides in a band around $375. The price point has been relatively stable for a few days idling between $375 and $380. It hard to tell from the historical price index, but Black Friday produced a little volatility but otherwise there’s been several days of near plateau.

Welcome to this week’s Bitcoin Weekly.

Bitcoin Foundation releases a fraud alert about copycat websites

“The Bitcoin Foundation’s website is being cloned and spoofed at web addresses and domains that have absolutely nothing to do with the Bitcoin Foundation,” the Foundation wrote on a blog.

Numerous users have been contacting the foundation about this problem over the past week and as a result

Currently the best-known clone websites include bitcompensation.com and bitsecuretransfer.com. Neither of these domains has any connection to the Bitcoin Foundation whatsoever and the Foundation warns that any contact from these domains should be met with skepticism and not to visit these pages.

The Bitcoin Foundation asks anyone who comes across a website cloning the Foundation’s site, image, or trademark to forward the web address to  webmaster@bitcoinfoundation.org with the subject line “SCAM SITE.”

Stay safe everyone.

Ronald McDonald House Charities executive director Jeff Yule AMA

Jeff Yule, Executive Director at Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Capital Region (Albany, NY), did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit answering questions about experience accepting bitcoins. RMH partnered with BitPay for donation processing and started accepting donations in mid November.

“What downsides would you say there are to a place like us accepting BTC?” asked /u/FreeTheWeb. “I have not found any tangible downsides other than skeptical board members who worry about the stories they have heard about people losing their bitcoin investments, etc… our investment and gift acceptance policies require liquidation of non USD donations, so thats what we do with bitcoin…”

Followed up by an answer as to how RMH used bitcoin: “We like it for the micro donations and from what I can tell, is where our sweet spot will be… with the ability to “tip” and donate from Twitter now…”

In response to /u/runningforoffice2016, Yule said that RMH had received 37 donations in the past 14 days since launch.

Ronald McDonald House is the newest in a long line of charities that have begun accepting bitcoins for donation. It follows in the footsteps of such charities as Sean’s Outpost, a homeless outreach shelter, which is powered by Bitcoin.

ChangeTip $3.5 million investment for the future of tipping

After an announcement from ChangeTip that the social media tipping service had exceeded 10,000 tips in one day, it seemed that a phenomena had begun. This sense has been vindicated recently by a seed round of funding that netted the company $3.5 million.

“The social media phenomenon of ‘tipping’, or expressing one’s appreciation over the Internet with small monetary or other digital gifts, is building momentum,” said ChangeTip CEO Nick Sullivan.

The tipping system has been in the news repeatedly lately for providing an extremely useful solution to an age-old Internet problem: how does one provide less-costly microtransactions for content? Using bitcoins it’s possible to tip a small fraction of a BTC and still manage not to incur too much of a fee—or at least much less than doing so with a credit card, where fees dwarf any microtransaction capability.

There’s still a few kinks to work out of tipping (such as transaction fees) but using bitcoins is clearly better than the alternative when it comes to transferring value. With a multitude of wallets and services such as Coinbase and Circle that make it easy to exchange bitcoins for cash, and adoption continuing to rise, ChangeTip believes that tipping may be the killer app bitcoin can dominate with.

MasterCard warpath against Bitcoin in Australia

According to Computerworld’s Australian website, MasterCard Incorporated is not very happy with Bitcoin. Representatives for the multinational corporation used a submission to a Senate inquiry to ask regulators to act against anonymity in transactions.

MasterCard’s submission argued that anonymity—a component of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous nature—can be used “to facilitate the purchase of illegal goods or services; to launder money or finance terrorism; and to pursue other activity that introduces consumer and social harm,” in a fashion difficult for the police to react to.

These arguments have not been uncommon amid critics of Bitcoin, and it has been cited by money laundering watchdogs, and involved in drug deals via sites such as Silk Road, but so far the pseudonymous nature of Bitcoin has not slowed authorities down very much.

The MasterCard submission went on to mention the collapse of Mt. Gox in an attempt to show that despite the public nature of the blockchain the coins lost from Gox have yet to be recovered or the holder of those coins revealed.

This leads to the thesis of MasterCard’s argument against Bitcoin as currently dangerous to consumers because “there is no bank, administrator, or regulator” backing its value. Members of the Bitcoin community would argue that this is a feature, not a bug.

NCR Silver Merchants reported as preferring Bitcoin over Apple Pay

In early November, Bitcoin Weekly summarized a report that NCR Corporation, a cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) system for merchants, was adding Bitcoin payments to its service. Recently, a report appeared on B2B digital news site Payment Week stating that merchants who used NCR Silver prefer Bitcoin payments to Apple Pay.

Reggie Kimble, the point-of-sale company’s product manager, told Payment Week that users have been vocal in questions about the cryptocurrency.

Kimble said, “We’re going to have our POS solution in the stadium in their fanzone, accepting bitcoin for transactions. So, when we look at opportunities to co-market and support one of our partners, and you couple that with merchant and consumer demand, it becomes a priority on our end to get that development work done.”

The story addresses an apparent rift in the expectations of merchants regarding Apple Pay and Bitcoin. According to Payment Week, Apple is seen as catering to major retailers while leaving small and medium businesses in the dust; whereas Bitcoin’s more open source approach provides greater adaptability and services for any merchant base.

Blockchain.info gets an official .onion address

When using your #Blockchain wallet via #Tor, you can now access us through this .onion link: http://blockchatvqztbll.onion/ @torproject

— Blockchain (@blockchain) November 29, 2014

Popular Bitcoin wallet Blockchain.info has gotten itself an official .onion address enabling users of the TOR network to anonymize their interactions with the website.