This week feels like a split between Circle becoming the first Bitcoin business to receive a New York BitLicense and Coinbase getting caught with its patents down.

As for good and great news, BitGo tweeted that the company has transacted over $1 billion in a single quarter. The mystery Bitcoin mining company, 21 Inc., has also released a developer-centric Linux-based hardware device similar to the Raspberry Pi that also mines bitcoins. And, also on the open source and developer circuit, Coinkite has updated its API wallet offerings and BitPay has released update 1.2.5 for its Copay open source wallet.

All this and more in this week’s Bitcoin Weekly.

Circle becomes first company to receive a New York BitLicense

Circle (Circle Internet Financial Limited), a Bitcoin wallet and financial services company, just announced that it is the first-known Bitcoin business to receive the New York BitLicense, a controversial regulatory measure set out by the city of New York.

“We’ve been fairly vocal about our concerns with the BitLicense, especially in its initial incarnation,” Circle’s co-founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville said on the blog. “Many of those issues were resolved, and though still not perfect, the BitLicense and its requirements became clear and irrefutable prerequisites for serving and supporting everyone in New York.”

The company also took the stage to announce new services available to U.S. customers: now in the United States, customers can send, receive, and hold U.S. dollars in addition to bitcoins.

Customers may now hold dollars in their accounts and still send and receive bitcoins from those accounts. This means that Circle members can enjoy the benefits of holding currency in USD and still trade in bitcoins without ever holding or buying bitcoins thus protecting customers from bitcoin volatility. This essentially means that Circle customers can use bitcoin as a backend for sending money and use stores of USD to pay for bitcoin products.

Circle’s iOS and Android apps have been renamed to Circle Pay and have additional functionality.

Funding accounts with a debit card is now free and instant—no more waiting. While customers start with a $300 USD weekly limit they will now have an opportunity to graduate to a $3,000 limit. Dollar deposits now have FDIC insurance. The mobile apps have also been streamlined to allow for faster account signup.

Coinbase applies for nine Bitcoin-related patents

Coinbase, Inc. best known as one of the most popular Bitcoin web wallets and now the owner of its own Bitcoin exchange has filed for nine Bitcoin-related patents. The patents, filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, are still pending approval but may show signs of what Coinbase is up to. CoinDesk caught wind of the USPTO filings via a hot tip.

The patents include numerous Bitcoin applications and products such as a hot bitcoin wallet, an instant exchange, a bitcoin tipping button, a personal vault, send bitcoin via e-mail and an on- and off-blockchain transaction system.

The patent submissions were received by the USPTO March 17 on this year and can take up to 32 months, or about three years, to get approved.

The revelation generated a negative reaction from the Bitcoin community, many of whom see the growth of Bitcoin as not belonging to any one company. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, went to Reddit to defend the actions of his company as it pertains to parents.

“My personal view is that software patents should be abolished. But unfortunately we don’t live in that world today,” Armstrong wrote and then posted an excerpt from an article by Paul Graham from 2006 called “Are Software Patents Evil?”

The excerpt argues that patents are a necessary evil of the business world, using “checking” (or deliberate disruption) in a hockey game as a metaphor for patents. Armstrong obviously believes that not attempting to patent products in Coinbase’s market would lead to the company failing at business.

He also chided CoinDesk for running the story about the patent filings without contacting Coinbase first. Although nothing in the article was anything but factual information about public filings that Coinbase could have opined on earlier realizing the nature of the community.

As for a counterpoint, SiliconANGLE’s own Duncan Riley disagrees with Armstrong’s position and aligns more readily with segments of the Bitcoin community on the subject of broadly patenting Bitcoin-related applications. Armstrong’s strategy of asking forgiveness being better than asking permission and chiding another news organization for reporting on publicly available filings does not make Coinbase look good in this.

BitGo transacts $1 billion in a single quarter

Very excited to announce that we have transacted $1bn in a single quarter! Proud of the team for all the dedication and hard work and…

— BitGo (@BitGo) September 22, 2015

The tweet says it all, BitGo Inc. posted $1 billion in bitcoin transactions in a single quarter. BitGo is a leading bitcoin security platform that provides a high security wallet product as well as API to developers and boasts $0 stolen since the company’s launch in 2013.

“For the sake of accuracy, our metrics do not count change address outputs. As an example if a user sends someone $3 from a wallet with $10 in it, we only count the $3 transaction and not the transfer of $7 back into the wallet,” said Regina Scolaro, Director of Marketing for BitGo.

21 just released its own Bitcoin mining Raspberry Pi machine

In yet-another-surprise-move, still somewhat mysterious 21 Inc. just announced a tiny form-factor machine, running Linux, with a Bitcoin miner attached that is extremely similar to the Maker favorite minicomputer the Raspberry Pi.

The tiny, bare-bones Linux-based computer provides everything a low power processor and interface can deliver for any developer, which means Internet of Things, network- and web-based applications.

The 21 Bitcoin Computer — in the electronic “flesh.” Photo courtesy of 21 Inc.

This device opens up a huge opportunity for software developers and hardware makers to prototype for the 21 marketplace and bitcoin applications in general. The implications of the device having its own bitcoin miner also means that the device itself can use the 21 bitcoin marketplace in order to fund its own operations–as the miner runs it will produce a small amount of bitcoins, which the device could then use to interact on the marketplace.

With the 21 marketplace, developers will be able to write applications connected by a publishable API that can provide marketable services to the network for bitcoin such as translation services, storing and publishing files, digital goods sales, rewarding peers for publishing links on social media, and a myriad of other Internet of Things market applications.

The 21 Bitcoin Computer is available for pre-order on Amazon.com for $399.99 and is expected to ship November 16, 2015.

Coinkite adds new API features

On the subject of APIs and developers, Coinkite Inc., provider of a bitcoin wallet developer solution themselves, a Bitcoin debit card and a Point of Sale solution, has added a few new features to their API. As part of the announcement, Coinkite added an “Advanced Send” command that allows for multi-send, UTXO control (unspent transaction outputs, see below), precise control over miner’s fees and setting the change address for any transaction.

Details of the API for Advanced Send is available at docs.coinkite.com/api/send_adv.html.

Multi-send allows the developer to use a single command to send a different payment amount to over 1,000 different addresses at once. Coinkite cites this as a way to provide accountability and transparency at the blockchain level when settling up with multiple debtors at once. It would also lower transaction fees by making it easier to bundle payments into a single transaction.

While Coinkite uses a complex algorithm to manage UTXO associated with each account, sometimes customers want to control their own outputs. When a Bitcoin transaction happens with an address the spent amount goes to the recipient, but the unspent portion (or change) can be sent to a different address or the unspent transaction output (UTXO). With this change, Coinkite developers can pick what addresses to send the unspent transactions to from every transaction.

With precise controls over miner’s fees, developers will also be able to choose exactly how much to pay.

BitPay Copay releases update 1.2.5

Today, BitPay Inc., leading Bitcoin payments processor, released version 1.2.5 of its open source Bitcoin wallet Copay. Copay acts as an actual bitcoin wallet and secures bitcoins using encrypted signatures, including multi-signature, and both the client and the server it runs on are open sourced.

Update 1.2.5 increases Copay’s compatibility with other wallets and provides backup handling using the industry standard for backups allowing the use of 12 memorable words as the seed for restoring wallets. This seed is also compatible with any BIP44 standard wallet, meaning that a seed from a BIP44 wallet can be immediately used and transaction history and balance updated.

Copy Version 1.2.5 also includes integration with Ledger’s Hardware Wallet. Leger integration is also available via Copy’s Chrome App.

BitPay also touted the involvement of its community in the development and feature release for Copay. Developers interested in the becoming part that community can check in at the forums or look at the source at GitHub.

Featured image credit: Dawson/Bloomberg News