This week Purse.io, a company that connects people with Bitcoins with people who have Amazon gift cards, saw several customers accounts compromised and a small amount of bitcoins stolen. While the investigation is ongoing, the company has managed to pin down the problem and resolved it over the weekend, see below for the news.

Blockstream, the poster-child company for bringing Bitcoin side-chains into the market (a very interesting innovation) has released its very first side-chain for Bitcoin exchanges: Liquid.

Gaming marketplace G2A has partnered with Bitcoin processor BitPay to start accepting bitcoins as payment. Monetas is working with the central bank of Tunisia, an African nation, to bring interoperable money transfers to the people (and eventually blockchain-based technology to do it). And Bitcoin exchange BitReserve, Inc. is re-branding itself and changing its paradigm from just an exchange to a fully-featured consumer bitcoin and money payment outfit including virtual and physical cards for payments.

Bitcoin’s market value has risen over the past week from a price of $243 USD per BTC up to around $255 USD per BTC, according to BitcoinAverage.com. Much of this rise has happened in the past few days after a dip during October 12th.

Purse.io customers bitcoins stolen via e-mail breach

This week saw another bitcoin heist when several customers of Purse.io (PurseIO, Inc.) had some of their bitcon held by the company stolen after an attacker gained access to their accounts. SiliconANGLE reporter Duncan Riley caught the story when news of the thefts surfaced on Reddit. Purse.io is a Bitcoin-related company that allows customers to get steep discounts on Amazon.com, Inc. products by allowing them to exchange bitcoins with Amazon.com customers who have Amazon cash on hand.

Shortly after discovering the unauthorized access to their system, Purse.io shut down services for approximately 5 hours on Sunday in order to assess the damage. After coming back online the company reached out to various news organizations with what had happened and updated its customers.

According to Purse.io an attacker compromised one of the company’s third-party email services, which allowed an attacker to send and intercept unauthorized password reset messages. The attacker then used this to access these accounts and pilfer bitcoins stored in them.

While various users of Reddit came forward with how many bitcoins they lost, Purse.io said that only 11 users had been affected and approximately 10.235 bitcoins had been stolen or around $2600.41. Purse.io has reimbursed all of the affected customers to the amount lost.

The attacker did not compromise the site’s hot or cold bitcoin wallets and, according to the company, customers with two-factor authentication enabled were not affected.

Although Purse.io has been careful in responding to this breach, Riley uncovered at least one community member who has further questions about the nature and reach of the compromise. One Reddit user, /u/Justin_Gray believes he has evidence that over 30 bitcoins were moved through the same address that withdrew the other stolen coins.

Purse.io has stated that the investigation is ongoing and has said that it will publish the details when it is ready to release the information.

Blockstream releases its first sidechain: Liquid

When Blockstream first emerged, the company, and its star-studded set of founders, showed a lot of promise in advancing blockchain technology, the globally distributed ledger that makes up the infrastructure that Bitcoin runs in. Blockstream’s researchers intend to do this by producing pegged sidechains, a method for allowing bitcoins to be transferred from the main blockchain to alternate sidechains.

Today’s announcement introduces the first technology generated by Blockstream’s efforts dubbed “Liquid.” The Liquid sidechain is designed to “improve capital efficiency and market liquidity by facilitating rapid and secure transfers between accounts held at any participating exchange or brokerage.”

Blockstream has partnered with a number of exchanges to use Liquid, including include Bitfinex, BTCC, Kraken, Unocoin, and Xapo.

“By providing users a way to securely and instantly move funds across exchanges, Liquid allows participants to take advantage of trade opportunities like never before,” said Zane Tackett, Director of Product Development, Bitfinex. “Minimizing spreads and increasing liquidity. Blockstream’s innovative solutions are definitely a game changer for the Bitcoin industry.”

The big takeaway is that the Liquid sidechain allows high-volume exchanges to rapidly transfer cryptocurrency assets (such as Bitcoin) in a form that reduces risk by using the security and irreversible transferability that Bitcoin provides. Liquid is also designed for commercial financial institutions so it adds a cryptographically secure, but still auditable, privacy component. This separate sidechain also provides a high-volume, low-cost transfer medium designed to “ increase market liquidity and reduce capital requirements for on-blockchain business models.”

Essentially, Liquid is another financial tool based on blockchain-technology being developed for commercial interests but marketed within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, via Bitcoin exchanges. This test bed within the blockchain-using ecosystem may provide a proving ground for similar sidechains to be used by global financial systems (such as banks).

G2A.com is a marketplace that sells a great deal of virtual and physical video game goods from cards to games themselves. Source: Screenshot of G2A.com’s website

Gaming marketplace G2A partners with BitPay

G2A.com Limited is a global marketplace for video game enthusiasts that combines the efforts of professionals and customers alike. This week, G2A announced a partnership with Bitcoin processor BitPay Inc. to add Bitcoin to G2APAY, the payment gateway for purchases on G2A.com.

“We are delighted to partner with G2A which will help us scale bitcoin payments to a broad gaming audience,” said Marcel Roelants, General Manager BitPay EMEA. “By their nature, digital goods like games, are borderless. Using bitcoin as a global payment method will complement the online experience.”

G2A boasts a massive audience as one of the global leaders in digital gaming marketplaces. The marketplace provides a safe and efficient way for merchants to make transactions for digital products such as games, game time cards, gift cards, Xbox Live cards, PSN codes and software activation codes for Steam (Valve Corporation’s game distribution service).

The company’s website has an audience over six million unique users and saw more than five million transactions worldwide in 2014.

This addition continues to strengthen Bitcoin adoption in the video game industry. In 2013, German online game developer Bigpoint GmbH began accepting bitcoins for virtual items, later even Richard Garriott–of Ultima Online fame–spoke highly of bitcoin’s potential for gaming, and Twitch.tv–prominent video game streaming website–also began accepting bitcoin for subscriptions. In the more indie scene, Spells of Genesis is a video game with its own assets (tradable cards) secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.

Monetas teams up with Tunisia to roll out blockchain-based payments

African countries have a problem with money. Much of the population is unbanked and instead uses mobile and telecom companies to transfer cash and make payments–this has been long seen as a market with huge potential for cryptocurrency. Tunisia, a North African country on the Mediterranean Sea, has been seeking that potential, according to IBTimes, through a more interoperable ecash technology backed by La Poste Tunisienne and the country’s central bank.

This system is expected to eventually incorporate elements of the BItcoin blockchain, especially those that permit seamless ease of exchanging currency between separate systems.

Monetas, the software company seeking to build that platform, says that while the ecash protocol will provide an interoperable currency that could one day connect to open systems such as the Bitcoin blockchain but there are no plans to make that happen yet–however, in a year or so the company hopes to interconnect with Bitcoin.

The money system, a mobile ecash connected to the country’s own currency, is called eDinar-Plus. Monetas has teamed up with La Poste Tunisienne and Tunisian startup DigitUs in order to spread the use of this mobile currency and bring it into mainstream use. eDinar is already a card-based payment tool that would provide the first layer needed to begin the process of rolling out the full platform.

photo credit: Bitcoin IMG_1924 via photopin (license)

Bitcoin exchange BitReserve rebrands as Uphold with additional fiat services

Bitcoin exchange company BitReserve, Inc. will now be known as Uphold, Inc. and has added a number of services that expands its financial reach from bitcoin exchanging to include fiat services as well.

Customers and businesses using Uphold will now be able to fund their accounts via via bank transfer or by linking a credit or debit card–but only in 33 European countries.

In December, the company also intends to roll out physical and virtual payment cards that will allow customers to pay merchants directly from their Uphold accounts with with Visa, MasterCard and Discover card.

According to Uphold President and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Watson the company is seeking to entice customers through a promise of extremely low fees when transacting in money. Most actions (payments, transfers, etc.) with Uphold are free excepting a 2.75 percent fee when members choose to fund an account with a credit or debit card.

With this offering, Uphold will open up a new variety of ways for customers to interact with Bitcoin by making it seamless and easy to fund with bitcoins and pay as if using an ordinary credit card. Since Uphold is also a Bitcoin exchange, it makes it possible to quickly and easily to pay and exchange with bitcoins as well.

Featured image credit: Bitcoin Logo, https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/12350379324