The Bitcoin Foundation’s past controversy involving money and transparency has grown into the appointment of a new Executive Director, Bruce Fenton, who went to Reddit to seek the community’s thoughts. In light of these past events, MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito also had thoughts on providing a safe space to progress Bitcoin protocol development.

In adoption news, LiveJournal now accepts Bitcoin payments in partnership with Coinbase. Bitcoin exchange Coinsetter bought out Canadian exchange Cavritex.

To further alternative payment systems, Bitcoin merchant services company GoCoin integrated Tether, an interesting payments concept outlined below.

Bitcoin Foundation’s new Executive Director seeks comments in Reddit AMA

Last week, it came to light that something appeared to be going seriously wrong at the Bitcoin Foundation. Foundation board member Olivier Janssens published a forum post outing the foundation as broke and suffering from a lack of transparency; the Foundation responded with plans to restructure.

As part of this restructuring, the Board of Directors of the Bitcoin Foundation appointed Bruce Fenton and today he went to Reddit to ask for advice, suggestions, and community input.

In the AMA text, Fenton spoke to the Foundation’s lack of money, citing a number of reasons.

“A combination of factors including losses on some activities, high expenses and a falling Bitcoin

price have reduced the foundation’s capital,” he said. “In the coming weeks I’m gathering a full picture of our internal resources and finances and with all activities will be as transparent as possible without violating the privacy of any member.”

Many of the replies from in thread show that the community has a lot of interest in the advancement of Bitcoin, adoption, and the security and promotion of the protocols. However, many of the comments still circled around the concept of transparency, and ever-present in the thread, Fenton has said, “Yes, I’d like to post the financials.”

Others have made comments to the unnecessary nature of the Bitcoin Foundation (in what people see as a decentralized community) and there have been repeated calls for simply dismantling the organization (more at 1, 2) to which Fenton has responded with advocacy that the Foundation is still valuable, has, and does, help the core developers and the community. Perhaps, he argues, it’s a bit too early to put the Bitcoin Foundation in an early grave because of recent events.

Say your piece at Reddit: Bitcoin Foundation would appreciate your advice, suggestions and input / New Exec Director AMA.

Joi Ito wants MIT to assist Bitcoin standards development

Bitcoin Magazine picked up a report from Xconomy that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab Director Joi Ito wants the institute to become a neutral space for academics to promote the development of Bitcoin standards.

“I think within a couple of weeks we’ll be announcing something which will be a little bit more substantive,” says Ito. “And I’m not pushing it, but I’m offering MIT as a neutral academic home for some of the conversations and the technical coordination. Which I think will give a lot more stability to Bitcoin, which right now is a little bit fragile.”

Ito told Xconomy that the impetus for this move came from the recent debacle that struck the Bitcoin Foundation, in which the foundation was described to be “effectively bankrupt,” and in the midst of a restructuring plan that may split the organization into two groups. Bitcoin has no neutral place where its protocols can be developed, the core developers and the Bitcoin Fondation made up the only “face” that Bitcoin has had in its few years.

Ito believes that Bitcoin could benefit from a neutral place for discussion and that it could benefit greatly from having one, such as how the Internet standards had similar benefit.

LiveJournal begins accepting bitcoin payments

Almost every teenager who grew up in the 90s who relied on the Internet knows about LiveJournal. An airy place for conversation, broken hearts, terrible poetry, and a vast array of communities and early bloggers. So, no doubt the children of the Internet will be pleased to hear that LiveJournal has partnered with Coinbase to provide payments via Bitcoin.

In the LJ account shop and paid subscription can be upgraded for free by using bitcoins: 70 more userpics or an additional 10 GB of storage space. Larger quantities can be bought, of course, but only the initial 70 pictures or 10 GB will be free.

Coinsetter acquires Cavirtex

Coinsetter, a New York-based Bitcoin exchange aimed at Wall Street traders, recently acquired Canadian exchange Cavirtex after the latter shut down due to security concerns. In February of this year, Cavirtex suffered a hack that compromised “an older version of our database, including 2FA secrets and hashed passwords.”

In the aftermath of the hack, Cavirtex went offline indefinitely.

The buyout by Coinsetter saw the Canadian exchange begin trading again immediately and will also move Cavritex’s headquarters to Toronto.

GoCoin integrates with Tether for fast bitcoin processing

Singapore-based Bitcoin merchant services company GoCoin recently integrated unique Bitcoin payment processor Tether to deliver free, fast bitcoin progressing to merchants.

Tether works under the proposition that merchants can get paid in Tethers, which can be cashed out 1:1 for fiat currency (USD, EURO, or JPY currently) or bitcoins at the same rate as it was paid in. Tether maintains the transactions as bitcoins in order to enable transparency in payments and to do this the company will keep auditable bitcoin reserves to cover customers.

GoCoin allows merchants to accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and now TetherUSD. Plans are already underway to enable euros and yen to be transacted as well.

Photo credit: The Associated Press.