It’s the end of the year and Christmas is coming early: Microsoft and Time Inc. have both started accepting bitcoins. This continues a strong trend over 2014 of businesses adopting the digital currency. Although right now there’s a lot of eyes on the exchange price, which seems to be dropping, it’s never seen this level of adoption in years past.

During the past week new information has been revealed about the Blockchain.info security issue and the ‘hacker’ who swept up the BTC from the insecure wallets produced. Much of the BTC stolen from the vulnerable Blockchain.info wallets has been returned and is in the process of being returned to wallet owners. Although that process seems a little rocky currently, see below.

Bitcoin also got an honorable, and reasonably sanguine, citation in Ford Motor Company’s Global Consumer Trends and Futuring report.

This and more in this week’s Bitcoin Weekly.

Bitcoin market value dropping?

The sharp decline of the Russian ruble has caught the attention of the world market, but at nearly the same time the Bitcoin market has also been seeing its own depression in index value.

The market index for Bitcoin has been on a decline for months now, looking at the 6 month graph shows a drop from around $600 at the end of June to $317 at time of writing (BitcoinAverage.com). Although this low had already been reached in early November, the value jumped up to the $400 band, and now the index is down again.

News outlets such as Newsweek have used the fall in the ruble and the depression in Bitcoin prices as an angle to write about both. The drop in value of the Russian ruble, of course, has generated more transactions in Bitcoin, but it has not led to any short-term increase in value.

Microsoft adds bitcoin option to Xbox and Windows app purchases

Gamers rejoice! You can now buy Xbox LIVE and Windows games (and apps) for bitcoin. Microsoft recently added the capability to add funds using bitcoins to the Microsoft wallet in order to make purchases on its service.

“The use of digital currencies such as bitcoin, while not yet mainstream, is growing beyond the early enthusiasts,” Eric Lockard, corporate vice president of Universal Store at Microsoft said in a statement to Forbes. “We expect this growth to continue and allowing people to use bitcoin to purchase our products and services now allows us to be at the front edge of that trend.”

This year was predicted to be the year of merchant adoption and even as December ticks away and Christmas approaches more merchants and services are coming on board. Microsoft’s acceptance of Bitcoin is a huge win for the community. It is also a coup for Bitpay, which got the partnership with Microsoft.

Time embraces bitcoin for subscriptions

Time Inc., the publisher of Time magazine, has begun accepting bitcoins for subscriptions to this well known news magazine in partnership with Coinbase.

Customers may now pay for digital and print subscriptions for Fortune, Health and This Old House and print subscriptions of Travel + Leisure using bitcoins.

When subscribing for one of the above magazines, the “Pay with Bitcoin” button is prominent and noticeable. It also includes some fine print addressing that bitcoin users will receive a pro-rated refund on cancellation for unserved issues (at current exchange rates.)

Coinbase’s statement on the matter exhibits excitement about the partnership because this is one of the first high profile bitcoin news from the publishing sector. Time Inc. produces multiple well-known and highly circulated print and digital magazines with over 130 million customers across multiple pubs.

While this move may expose Time to more customers, it more likely to open up the opportunity to use bitcoin to the existing audience and continue to increase the legitimacy of Bitcoin as a mainstream digital currency.

 Image credit: Time Inc. subscription to Fortune screenshot.

Bitcoin cited in Ford’s Global Consumer Trends report

Every year, Ford Motor Company releases a report about consumer trends and the future and the company’s 2015 report mentions Bitcoin four times in two segments.

While the report is highly speculative and cites bitcoin alongside Apple Pay and Google Wallet, it seems sanguine about the trend towards digital currency. The report itself simply mentions a consumer trend towards giving up on credit cards and physical wallets and a greater use of smartphones and mobile devices.

Blockchain.info wallet hacker returns taken funds

Last week, popular Bitcoin web wallet Blockchain.info disclosed a security vulnerability that left the site’s wallets open to attack for approximately two and a half hours. Wallets made in that time became insecure and were quickly vacuumed clean of their BTC by an unknown attacker. Mere days later the attacker came forward and returned 267 BTC to Blockchain.info in a show of good will.

CoinDesk reports that the hacker, named “johoe”, who swept up the defective Blockchain.info wallets returned the ill-gotten goods and even explained how he did it.

The core of the attack, johoe explained, scans recently added data on the Bitcoin blockchain for repeated ‘R values.’

“Every bitcoin transaction is signed by two values – ‘R’ and ‘S’ – which prove that the sender knows the private key,” he said. “If the same R value is used twice, the private key can be easily computed from the signatures alone.”

When Blockchain.info introduced a security vulnerability into its wallet encryption method it weakened the wallet security to the point where johoe’s scanner caught the error, broke the encryption, and slurped up the BTC.

By becoming the person who swept up the vulnerable BTC and returning it to Blockchain.info johoe has proven himself a very good asset to the Bitcoin community. The initial amount of BTC returned (there have been more coins swept since these reports) translates to approximately 86 thousand dollars USD. That’s a lot of money to part with.

…Then Blockchain.info asked for user passwords in plaintext

Ordinarily, any Internet business will never ask for a password via e-mail or phone because passwords are a thing that the business already has in a database. In fact, most security practices includes a notice from the company in question saying: “Staff will never ask you for your password via e-mail or phone.”

So why did Blockchain.info e-mail its users and ask for identifier and password? Cryptocoin News picked up the reaction on Reddit and the response from Blockchain.info.

In the wake of the security issue allowing BTC to be stolen from Blockchain.info wallets the company e-mailed users asking them to send identifier and password.

This created quite a stir in the Bitcoin community (and a great deal of skepticism.) Then, George Mandrik, User Operations Manager at Blockchain.info took to Reddit to explain: the identifier and password are needed to decrypt backup wallets on the service in order to verify that a user had suffered a loss of BTC.

Mandrik also stressed that the wallet given should be empty (i.e. it would be if it had its coins taken) and that the password given should never be used again.

The reason for the odd message has been explained, but it’s worth noting that sending password and identifier in the clear can be very dangerous. Bitcoin users have become necessarily wary of security problems because of how easy it is for an attacker to then use that information to divest them of personal information or bitcoins.