Over the weekend it became known that The Bitcoin Foundation, a well-known U.S.-based institution dedicated to evangelizing bitcoin and funding a few bitcoin core developers, is strapped for cash. This news came with part and parcel with some drama over the funding situation at the foundation and the news is still developing regarding a potential restructuring.

Bitcoin exchange Coinapult has restored services after a major hack that saw the loss of 150 BTC. Customers may now deposit and withdraw bitcoins as before and full exchange services have returned. And Buttercoin, a Google-backed exchange launched last year, has announced that it cannot go on and will close on April 10.

Presidential candidate Rand Paul announced his bid for the U.S. presidency on Tuesday and is also testing the waters with bitcoin donations, which makes him the first candidate for President to accept bitcoin.

Coinbase announced a new developer portal and a six-week hackathon with over $70,000 in prizes. Overstock.com, the first major retail outlet to accept bitcoin, is funding a bitcoin-related solutions company, PeerNova, $5 million. Align Commerce launched an international payments service that uses bitcoins to reduce costs and speed up business to business payments. The Bitcoin Bowl is no more as BitPay and ESPN Events dissolve a deal made last year to rename the St. Petersburg Bowl.

The Bitcoin Foundation is strapped for cash

This weekend Bitcoin Foundation board member Olivier Janssens announced that the foundation was “effectively bankrupt.” This message began the center of a controversy where Jannsens claimed that the lack of funds extended from poor transparency on the part of the foundation. He also claimed that 90% of the staff had been fired and that the foundation would be unable to keep core developers previously funded on the payroll.

Both Executive Director Patrick Murck and Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen responded to the claims with calls for calm and with statements that in effect confirmed that the foundation has indeed run out of money.

The foundation has published a bullet-point blog post outlining the current status of the company and plans for the future in a rebuttal to Janssens’s weekend commentary.

This is a developing story and it has already been revealed that developers on the Bitcoin Foundation’s payroll are seeking other employment to keep working. Even if the foundation does restructure or go under, bitcoin core development will not be impacted. The future of the foundation, however, in light of the money troubles is still murky.

Coinapult restores service after hack

In the wake of a hack that stole 150 BTC, Coinaput bitcoin exchange has announced full restoration of service. Users may now deposit BTC and use locks in addition to withdrawing and locking.

On March 17, 2014, Coinapult revealed the discovery that its hot wallet had been hacked and 150 BTC (approx. $42 thousand at the time) had been stolen. Immediately following the attack all deposits and withdrawals from Coinapult were frozen and services were suspended to protect customer funds and allow for an investigation.

Coinapult staff have been unable to determine a specific point of attack, in spite of the investigation.

In the wake of the hack, Coinapult has moved to new servers and a new hosting operator. And, due to continuing DDOS attacks, the exchange has also enlisted CloudFlare for defense.

The hot wallet has been replaced with a 2 of 3 multisig system, which will currently require a countersignature from a Coinapult executive at time of withdrawal. This implementation was aided by Coinkite for wallet management.

The exchange also warns customers that due to this new precaution there will be some delays in withdrawals—due to an executive needing to be present to manually sign transactions. Hours of operation are 9am-9pm Panama (UTC-5.)

Coinpult expressed expectations that this interim solution will be phased out and client-side signing will be implemented, putting customers in control of their own wallets.

Coinbase launches new developer portal and 6-week hackathon

Leading bitcoin merchant service and web wallet Coinbase has announced the launch of a shiny new developer portal this week alongside a distributed hackathon.

The new portal consolidates numerous resources for developers looking to make use of the Coinbase API including services that access the Bitcoin blockchain, as well as Coinbase wallet API, merchant API, and exchange API. The developer portal includes the recently reported Developer Sandbox so that developers can test bitcoin apps while accessing an isolated test version of the Bitcoin blockchain.

To get things heated up, Coinbase also announced the company’s second-ever hackathon, a six-week distributed endeavor named BitHack V2.

The hackathon began yesterday, April 8, 2014, and applications related to Bitcoin technology will be accepted through May 19, 2015. The hackathon features over $70,000 worth of prizes and will be “judged by leading Bitcoin experts and investors.” The winner of the hackathon will receive a grand prize of $10,000 worth of bitcoins as valued at the time of announcement.

Coinbase invites developers to get started by registering at the hackathon website. The hackathon is international, so individual and developer teams can be located anywhere in the world. At minimum the application must be related to Bitcoin in some way, either by using the currency directly or by leveraging Bitcoin technology to enhance user experience.

Developers who elect to use the Coinbase API should sign up for a Coinbase account and possibly a Sandbox account. There is also a discussion forming on Twitter and in the Coinbase Community.

Rand Paul becomes first presidential candidate to accept bitcoin donations

United States presidential candidate Rand Paul has become the first to accept bitcoin donations for his campaign, reports CNN Money. The presidential hopeful and Libertarian Republican senator from Kentucky announced his presidential bid on Tuesday and his website shows that he accepts donations from credit card, PayPal, and in the form of bitcoins.

Overstock.com bets $5 million on PeerNova

Overstock.com, Inc. recently invested $5 million in San Jose-based Bitcoin technology startup PeerNova Inc. as part of Series A funding.

PeerNova was founded in early 2014 as the merger of two other Bitcoin-related ventures: cloud mining contractor CloudHashing and ASIC designer HighBitcoin. PeerNova describes itself as seeking to bring blockchain-based technologies to the enterprise at scale and to serve as a disruptor to payments platforms by reducing friction, costs, and improving security.

To date, PeerNova has raised $13.6 million in funding to achieve these goals.

Align Commerce launches B2B, C2B service using Bitcoin blockchain

Noting the extreme cost of international payments—mostly due to regulations and legacy systems choking up payment pipelines—a new startup, Align Commerce, is seeking to use the border-defying nature of bitcoin to make business to business and customer to business payments easier.

The concept appears simple on the outset: businesses sign up for the Align Commerce service and invoices are paid in the terrestrial currency of the sender, Align transforms that into bitcoin locally, sends the bitcoin, and then exchanges it back to fiat in the recipient’s country for payment. Businesses do not need to interact with foreign exchange markets and can eschew aging, clogged legacy payment systems.

CEO and Founder Marwan Forzley claims this process can both save money and time sometimes lowering transaction times to as little as one to three days from seven using legacy payment systems. The Align Commerce Payments Platform is now available in 34 countries.

For some time now, the Bitcoin network has been held up as a possible model for alternative payment systems—especially when used as a backend that is invisible to businesses and customers—and Align Commerce’s service provides one of the first test cases for this solution method.

Buttercoin closure

The oddly named Buttercoin bitcoin exchange is closing up shop on April 10 at 11pm PDT.

The exchange, best known for being backed by the investments arm of search giant and all-around information overlords Google, Inc., launched just four months ago. And it is shutting down due to a lack of venture capital to keep the boat sailing.

“With the dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors, we weren’t able to generate enough venture capital interest to continue funding Buttercoin,” the business wrote in a press statement.

Bitcoin Bowl no more after BitPay/ESPN dissolve sponsorship deal

After the St. Petersburg Bowl became the Bitcoin Bowl things seemed to be going well for the sponsorship deal between BitPay Inc. and ESPN Events. The deal, which was signed for three years, was cancelled by the two parties and the bowl has reverted to its previous name.

The first sports event at the Bitcoin Bowl drew 3.3 million viewers during a game where the North Carolina State Wolfpack beat the University of Central Florida Knights, 34-27.

According to press statements from BitPay and ESPN the deal was dissolved by mutual agreement between both parties. Questions still remain as to the financial nature of the dissolution of the deal and what this means for BitPay’s future outreach.

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