The biggest news this week comes from web and mobile payments processor Stripe who took a year of testing to get good and now announced full integration for customers–with a single line of code. Next in line is Blockchain.info, which reports three million customer Bitcoin wallets. And even more big news Japanese e-commerce kaiju Rakuten all but announces bitcoin acceptance.

In light of all these hacks, Bitcoin security company BitGo has announced a $250,000 insurance policy covering bitcoin deposits.

In crime-related news, BTER.com continues to stay on the radar as the company attempts to shore up poor relations with customers whom have not been reimbursed for lost funds. The company continues to update its Twitter about seeking the lost funds but seems unable to offer refunds and may sell the company as a solution.

And, although it was hacked back in June 2014, largely unknown Chinese Bitcoin exchange KipCoin just announced the loss of 3,000 BTC.

Online payments provider Stripe launches Bitcoin support

After a year of rigorous testing, San Francisco-based web and mobile payments outfit Stripe has launched a service upgrade that allows merchants to accept Bitcoin payments. Stripe began testing the possible service in March 2014 with data backup service Tarsnap and started an open beta program.

Stripe provides fully fledged documentation and an API reference for developers. Adding bitcoin payments looks as simple as adding a few lines to provided code, which activates UI elements during the payment process for customers.

Here are the capabilities that Stripe has released:

• Anyone can sign up for a Bitcoin processing account, there is no waiting period;
• For users already integrated with Stripe, adding Bitcoin acceptance is one line of code;
• Management is simple—Bitcoin transactions appear side-by-side with fiat currency;
• Bitcoin transactions display clear, public pricing and have a 0.5% transaction fee.

Stripe is well known for providing payments for numerous popular services including Kickstarter, Instacart, and Shopify. This could mean that Kickstarter could start accepting Bitcoin, if the company decides to proceed with the simple Stripe implantation.

Blockchain.info exceeds 3 million wallets in February, 2015

Blockchain.info exceeds 3 million wallets

During this Bitcoin Weekly period Bitcoin wallet and information service Blockchain.info exceeded 3 million user created wallets (Blockchain.info chart.) The chart shows a steady year-over-year rise with a fairly consistent slope that shows an acceleration in signups at the beginning of 2014.

CoinDesk contacted Blockchain.info CEO Peter Smith, who would not speak to how many of those wallets were active, but did speak to how the current transaction volume is a good sign for Bitcoin’s growth.

“You can look to the 140% (approx.) year-over-year growth in the number of transactions powered by our software daily to get a sense for activity, which, as a company focused on making it easy to transact, is really encouraging,” he said.

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten planning to accept Bitcoin

In a statement this week, Japanese e-commerce Rakuten Inc. CEO Hiroshi Mikitani confirmed his company’s interest in pursuing Bitcoin acceptance.

“We are thinking about it, and we probably will,” Mikitani told the audience at the Rakuten Financial Conference, “We would like to be open [to Bitcoin].”

Rakuten drew $5.3 billion in 2013 and is extremely well connected in Japan where it’s online shopping service Rakuten Ichiba is a competitor to Amazon.com. It is also the largest e-commerce site in Japan. The company also owns the popular site Buy.com and e-book maker Kobo.

BitGo gets $250,000 bitcoin deposit insurance

Palo Alto-based Bitcoin security company BitGo, Inc. has announced a partnership with Innovation Insurance Group and XL Group to provide $250,000 in bitcoin deposit insurance. The partership will give customers peace of mind that if BitGo suffers and hacks or errors on its own part.

Customers who opt in to the insurance will protected up to that amount and those who want to increase their protection can do so for a 1% annual fee.

The addition of insurance that covers customers from hacks continues a trend of Bitcoin outfits announcing insurance policies such as Coinbase, who although holding insurance since 2013, only announced a partnership publicly with London-based Aon plc in 2014.

Noting February’s continued devastation from a mounting list of hacks and service disruptions at exchanges, and a trail of broken exchanges, hacks, and losses from previous years, insurance should be a go-to need for any business operating in the Bitcoin space.

More coverage is available at CoinDesk.

Legacy of BTER.com’s alleged hack continues

This month, several exchanges went offline due to service disruptions or hacks. One exchange in particular, BTER.com lost 7,160 BTC (approx. $1.66 million) in an alleged hack. Since then the exchange has offered a reward of about 10% of the lost BTC for information leading to its recovery.

When SiliconAngle contacted the site with a query about reimbursement to customers, BTER representatives directed Bitcoin Weekly to watch the Twitter account.

We are seeking all ways to compensate our users including selling http://t.co/nsX4sStHiR (Debits & funds not included): admin@mail.bter.com

— Bter.com Exchange (@btercom) February 18, 2015

So far, BTER’s twitter has stated that the company is seeking options for repayment of customers, but a Spokeswoman speaking to CoinDesk said the company may seek selling off its platform to do so. The company’s Twitter account has also announced that both CNY and USD withdrawals have been re-enabled. It seems that the exchange is opening up again, but without the BTC reimbursements it’s hard to say it will go anywhere. Meanwhile, the company spokeswoman said that tips have been flowing in from bounty hunters and the Twitter account has also posted for help contacting a Bitcoin mixing service.

Please help us to get touch with the BitcoinFog (http://t.co/0BvGIWIPkW,http://t.co/f4yYGgjn3e) operator. Email us at: admin@mail.bter.com. — Bter.com Exchange (@btercom) February 25, 2015

Bitcoin mixing services (see: Bitcoin Wiki entry) exist to enhance anonymity of bitcoin transfers by mixing bitcoin transactions with others. The concept is designed to make it difficult to trace transactions back to their source by comingling funds from multiple sources and “mixing” them together to produce entangled transaction trails. Bitcoin Fog is a well known mixer service that uses the Tor network to protect users.

At the time of the hack, Reddit user /u/jonstern posted a rundown of where the bitcoins went and 170 BTC appears to have been sent to Bitcoin Fog at the time, but the remainder rests at multiple addresses in 1,000 BTC increments.

Adding China-based KipCoin exchange to the hacked list

CryptoArticles reports that relatively unknown Chinese exchange KipCoin announced that hackers stole over 3,000 BTC from the platform in June 2014. This late news comes, according to site administrators, in light of troubles at BTER (cited above.)

According to CryptoArticles, the news is reported in Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo (post in Chinese, requires login).

KipCoin’s website itself displays a message (Chinese translated by Google), “Because of BTC Bitcoin piggy bank stolen, we will temporarily shut down the service, causing inconvenience to you we apologize …” preceding a link to the Weibo post.

[Correction: The headline originally mistakenly listed the BitGo deposit insurance at $25,000; it has been corrected to $250,000 ($250k).]

photo credit: Bitcoin IMG_1924 via photopin (license); Dom W via photopin cc