The news for Bitcoin during the past week has been part lawsuit, part awesome funding, and part the rise of new exchanges to add into the already thickening ecosystem. Right now, CoinLab and MtGox had a partnership that went sour and ended with acrimonious legal proceedings—to the tune of $75 million in damages. Coinbase has received over $5 million in further capital investment to be the best wallet the Internet has ever seen. And, last but not least, Bitbox and Crypto Street have risen up to provide BTC exchange services.

CoinLab and MtGox exchange legal fusillade in $75 million dollar lawsuit

When CoinLab and MtGox sought to partner up to make exchanges of bitcoins for other currency smoother and more secure it seemed like it would just be another deal made in the newly-forming corporate space—but when that partnership fell through, bad things started happening. Seattle-based CoinLab had hoped to become the method by which MtGox would break into the US market; but in spite of overtures to become that operational base, MtGox never complied.

“Mt. Gox has continued to market to customers in North America and has accepted business from customers there,” CoinLab wrote in its lawsuit. “Mt. Gox has also failed to provide CoinLab with account reconciliation data, server access, and other information promised in the agreement that is essential for CoinLab to market exchange services and service its customers as contemplated in the agreement.”

Bristling at this problem, CoinLab filed suit against the Tokyo-based MtGox in U.S. District Court for Western Washington on Thursday, May 2^nd, 2013. Aside from the alleged multiple counts of breach of contract, the lawsuit also claims damages exceeding the whopping cost of $75 million.

Coinbase raises $5M in a giant round of funding for the startup

Well-known online Bitcoin wallet service and startup, Coinbase, announced recently that it has received $5 million in investment funding led by Union Square Ventures.

“We need 10 people yesterday,” said co-founder Fred Ehrsam referring to the near-exponential growth of the use of the wallet-hub—which includes one of the easiest ways for newcomers to actually purchase and not just store BTC. Hopefully this sort of funding round will even make that better (as it is, Coinbase purchases only a certain number of bitcoins a day and it runs dry very quickly.)

Coinbase also functions as a payment processor for personal users, merchants, and others who don’t want to work directly with bitcoins—in a manner similar to BitPay and others.

Y-Combinator’s Paul Graham had some nice things to say about Coinbase and their growth:

“Hackers are the animals that can detect a storm coming or an earthquake,” he said. “They just know, even though they don’t know why, and there are two big things hackers are excited about now and can’t articulate why–Bitcoin and 3D printing.”

Being an aficionado of 3D printing myself, it’s not surprising to me that these two innovative technologies end up in the same thought.

Two Bitcoin exchanges launch: Bitbox and Crypto Street

During this last week, Bitcoin has seen several new exchanges join the ever-growing marketplace for trading BTC.

Crypto Street, based at the eponymous URL Crypto.ST, has dubbed themselves the exchange “Where WALL STREET trades BITCOINS.” From what we can see, Crypto.st is still in development but has opened up invitations to interested users. The FAQ and other information suggest that they intend to be a meta-exchange that will attempt to allow users to buy BTC at one exchange and sell them at another to make money off the difference. In economic terms this is called “arbitrage.” It’s apparent that Crypto.st desires to become a facilitator of bitcoin arbitrage across various exchanges including BTC-e, MtGox, Vircurex, and Bitstamp.

Bitbox is based in the United States and happy to be FinCEN compliant. The about section presses that Bitcoin emerged due to necessity and due to the overwhelming need for functional exchanges in the market, “BitBox is also emerging from necessity. Recent events have shown that the Bitcoin economy is simply too large for one exchange to handle, no matter how efficient and scalable its architecture may be. The existing options for exchange are woefully inadequate to handle the kind of load that will come with being a mainstream part of the global financial system. Many people simply do not have a viable option for exchange.”