This week Bitcoin “lives in interesting times” with a number of excellent news items and some that show that there’s still some shaky ground to be walked. Amid the amazing news, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has moved forward with plans to accept bitcoin payments.

Coinbase is feeling the heat now as Chief Compliance Officer Martine Niejadlik in the wake of bold moves by the company. OKCoin seems to be going through some sort of shake up over the past few weeks with multiple executives leaving its decks for elsewhere.

Bitcoin is getting a little bit of bad press because of ransomware targeting gamers—but really this is more about the ransomware than bitcoin.

Finally, two Bitcoin exchanges have been hit with hacks leading to the theft of bitcoins in the past three days: well-known and respected Coinapult lost 150 BTC and nearly-unknown AllCrypt lost 42 BTC.

All this in this week’s Bitcoin Weekly.

Rakuten accepting bitcoin for global e-commerce

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, Inc. has announced plans to enable bitcoin purchases via an integration with Bitnet. The payment method will first arrive for customers in the U.S., followed by Germany and Austria.

Yaz Iida, President of Rakuten USA said that bitcoin met Rakuten’s mission to empower the world through the Internet.

“Not only can bitcoin support this vision by helping our merchants better compete globally,” he added, “but it also has the potential to benefit society by enhancing the security, privacy, and convenience of financial transactions.”

This news comes after Rakuten’s executives spoke to the press in February suggesting an interest in bitcoin.

San Francisco-based bitcoin merchant services provider Bitnet has offices in California and Belfast, Ireland, and is known for having sold its payment gateway product to Yahoo! For $2bn in 2010. In October 2014 the company announced a $14.5 million round of series A funding where Rakuten was one of the investors.

Coinbase Chief Compliance Officer resigns

Coinbase Inc., notable Bitcoin payment processor and web wallet service, has been in a tough spot recently attempting to negotiate regulations across the United States and offer an easy-to-use exchange. Things may be getting tougher for the Bitcoin business with the resignation of company Chief Compliance Officer Martine Niejadlik.

Niejadlik’s resignation was first reported by InsideSources on March 12 and verified with Coinbase.

“We can confirm that Martine Niejadlik has left Coinbase in order to spend more time with her family,” said a spokesperson for the company in a statement to InsideSources. According to the same spokesperson, Niejadlik would be keeping up with Coinbase as an outside consultant.

Niejadlik’s appointment at Coinbase in November 2013 came with much fanfare as she’s a veteran of the e-commerce finance industry, hailing from PayPal, EBay and Amazon. Having someone with that level of experience appeared to be a good call for the minefield of regulations that Bitcoin would be facing.

And in that minefield, Coinbase recently found regulatory controversy by claiming it was the first ‘licensed exchange’ in the U.S., a claim quickly rebutted by regulators in California and New York.

Erin Coppin (LinkedIn), who previously worked for Bancbox, Inc. as compliance director, will be taking over as Coinbase’s Chief Compliance Officer. Bancbox is described as a “payments platform specializing in building payments solutions for industries operating in complex regulatory environments.” This experience might come in very useful in the Bitcoin regulatory landscape.

What’s happening at OKCoin?

OKCoin, China’s second largest Bitcoin exchange, appears to be in the midst of a management shakeup. According to BTCFeed, several of the company’s top level executives have left the company in the past few weeks.

Amid those executives jumping ship include: Changpeng Zhao, CTO (CoinDesk reports); Zane Tackett, International Operations Manager; Richard Bensberg, Chief Compliance Officer; Chris Woods, DIO; Damian, Alibaba Product Designer; and Nika, Team Lead of Customer Service.

China’s position on the world’s stage for Bitcoin makes these departures dramatic for the Bitcoin community. However, OKCoin has remained optimistic in the face of concerned questions about departures, especially Zhao’s last month, and has assured the community that the company is still growing.

Gamer targeting ransomware asks for bitcoin payments

The boogeyman of ransomware has been on the rise lately and the authors of this particularly nasty type of malware have been looking to bitcoin to ply victims. A new breed of this malware targets gamers, according to BBC News—encrypting and ransoming saved games and other important files—and it targets over 40 separate games including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and World of Tanks.

Bitcoin’s only involvement in this process is the use of the digital currency as a means of payment. A key to unlock the affected games is only provided after $500 in bitcoins is paid, approx. 2 BTC, or $1,000 via PayPal.

Steam is also hit by this ransomware as is the popular sandbox game Minecraft. A thorough breakdown of the nature and disposition of this ransomware can be read at the Bromium Labs blog.

Coinapult hot wallet compromise

Tuesday morning, March 17, Bitcoin payment processing service Coinapult discovered an unauthorized access to the company’s hot wallet that resulted in a loss of 150 BTC (approx. $43k USD). The company swiftly announced a warning to customers to stop sending bitcoins to Coinapult addresses and began a very transparent investigation into what happened.

The investigation is ongoing and for the time being Coinapult has suspended services. No new updates have been revealed since Tuesday afternoon, but a Google Doc outlining the investigation and participants is available.

AllCrypt hack leads to 42 BTC loss

The year 2015 continues to gather reports of Bitcoin exchanges getting hit by hackers and the newest victim is AllCrypt, a largely unknown Bitcoin exchange run on WordPress. BTCFeed caught the story earlier this morning after AllCrypt changed its front page to a notice and published a blog post describing the hack.

In the wake of this hack, AllCrypt has suspended operations.

“Spent the last 16 hours scouring logs. I believe I know what happened and how,” reads the front page now. The blog post linked above includes the what happened and how. “The site is down, for now, completely, until I can assess the damage done. I’m not even sure there is anything to bring back up.”

According to AllCrypt, the thief managed to abscond with 42 BTC (approx. $11,181 USD). Of that amount, 30 BTC belonged to customers of AllCrypt and the remaining 12 BTC belonged to the company itself.

The alleged intrusion was managed using SQL-injection in order to gain access to the WordPress admin section and from there fanned out to access the Bitcoin wallet. Several SQL injections later and the attacker created fake BTC balances and laundered it through DOGE and LTC on the site in order to exchange for legitimate BTC.

photo credit: Photo of Martine Niejadlik, formerly CCO at Coinbase, Inc.; and Mr.TinDC via photopin cc