With so many e-retail sites starting to take bitcoins—from 1-800-Flowers to Newegg—Spendabit, a search engine, has stepped up to let people look for product they can buy with BTC. A wallet service, Xapo, just made Bitcoin history with the biggest total investment so far at $40 million. France has joined the US as the second nation to confiscate bitcoins from an illegal operation after the French authorities shut down an illegal bitcoin exchange site.

Go to Spendabit for your retail shopping needs

Don’t know a site that’s selling the retail item that you need, check out a new search engine that can find what you want. Spendabit.com is a search engine with a database compiling 1.5 million things that can be bought with bitcoins. This could mean anything from candy to smartphones.

The front page is a minimalistic search asking you only to enter your desires.

The list of sites searchable is still growing but currently includes: BitDazzle, Reeds Jewelers, Newegg, BitcoinShop.US, PetFancy, Square Market, Overstock.com, Beloved Shirts, Murfie, TigerDirect.com, Mises Bookstore, Bitcoin Store, BitRoses, Bitcoinin, and Fancy. Readers may recognize a few of those as having been announced here on Bitcoin Weekly.

The search is a little bit pettish currently, though, and is not good with relevance (but it does show there’s a lot of potential results.) I want a Galaxy S5 and I wondered who might be selling one for Bitcoin. Searching “Galaxy S5” brought back so many results not a smartphone—accessories, screen covers, etc.—that I need to narrow the keywords.

“Galaxy S5 Smartphone” got me what I needed. Tigerdirect.com has one for $650, which is approximately 1 BTC.

Xapo makes record receiving $40 million investment

Xapo, an online wallet provider, just received $20 million in Series A-1 funding adding to a previous $20 million from Series A funding in March. This places Xapo in the record breaking position of being a Bitcoin-related business that has raised the most money in Bitcoin history.

.@Xapo Raises $20M, Led by Greylock and Index – Reid Hoffman and Mike Volpi joins board… http://t.co/hFx1DYTBdU pic.twitter.com/3b2kOHBANv

— Xapo (@xapo) July 8, 2014

In a blog post on the matter, Xapo Founder and CEO Wences Casares waxes speculative about Bitcoin’s future. He notes that currently Bitcoin is a store of value and that it is still on its journey to becoming a viable payment mechanism. He finally adds that further down the road it will become a “unit of account,” which is a fancy way of saying money.

“I’m particularly impressed by how quickly the bitcoin ecosystem has started to evolve,” Casares said on the subject.

Wallet services such as Xapo do provide a bridge for some of the technological and cultural hurdles that stand in the way of BTC being used as easily as USD in transactions.

France uproots illegal Bitcoin exchange

Following the US into bitcoin seizure territory, French police have dismantled an illegal Bitcoin exchange and confiscated 388 BTC from the operation. Reuters reports that this is the first such operation to take place in Europe.

“It’s the first time in Europe that a judicial action has resulted in the closure of an illegal exchange for virtual currency,” Olivier Caracotch, prosecutor in the southwestern town of Foix where the investigation started, told Reuters.

At press time 388 BTC comes in around $242,200 USD at about $624 per BTC (according to BitcoinAverage.com.)

According to RT.com, two suspects are in custody—a Tunisian, 27, and his suspected accomplice, a 36-year-old Frenchman. The pair are under investigation for alleged involvement in illegal banking, money laundering and, also, illegally operating a gambling website.

Under French law, platforms that exchange bitcoins and euros must be approved by ACPR, the country’s bank and insurance supervisory body. Reported by RFi, Radio France international, the exchange website, which had not been authorized, had been used for almost 2,750 transactions and exchanged almost 2,500 bitcoins between November 2013 and July 2014.

While 388 BTC is a paltry sum compared to the US Marshals Service recent auction in the US of just under 3,000 BTC, this news represents yet another country shutting down an operation and confiscating virtual currency.