The crash and burn of Mt Gox felt as if it would shake the foundations of the Bitcoin ecosystem–in hindsight, it did, but not in the way that it seemed it would: instead of causing an economic crash, Mt Gox was quickly replaced by rivals. When news of troubles came out of Mt Gox, then CEO Mark Karpeles blamed everything but his own exchange (even the Bitcoin protocol) however it’s beginning to look as if Mt Gox’s troubles did not happen all at once: it was a slow and stead bleed for years.

Bitcoin web wallet Xapo has announced a partnership with Latin American social media portal Taringa! that will bring cryptocurrency to the over 27 million users of the site. It will do this by allowing website users to tip content creators in bitcoins, via votes, as part of the platform’s revenue sharing program.

CryptoMoms, a forum dedicated to encouraging women to enter into the cryptocurrency community, has celebrated its first anniversary. B&C Exchange has announced an upcoming fundraiser to produce a fully-distributed user-owned exchange. And UK-based exchange CoinMate.io just launched offering low trade fees.

Welcome to this Bitcoin Weekly.

Mt Gox heist went on for years

WizSec, a Tokyo-based group investigating the crash of Mt Gox, shows that the exchange may have actually been insolvent long before its downfall in 2014. According to information reported by The Register, the investigative group believes that the thieves began siphoning off BTC starting as early as 2011.

“By the end of 2011 we are past most data gaps, but we are seeing a clear discrepancy of several hundred thousand BTC between expected holdings and actual holdings,” the WizSec report concludes. “Furthermore, if we look closely, this discrepancy seems to be growing over time.”

Wether Mt Gox knew it or not, the report alleges, the exchange must have been working on fractional reserves for years until all the bitcoins had been depleted in 2013. Over time bitcoins continuously went missing in a steadily decreasing pace until the thefts flattened out near the end–when no bitcoins were left to deplete.

Researchers discovered that bitcoins leaking out of Mt Gox had no withdrawal records in the logs. The leaked bitcoins would pool into accounts until they were swept together into accounts holding a few thousand BTC, which were then meted out to exchanges at a few hundred bitcoins at a time.

The destinations of the aggregated coins are still unknown but The Register reports that researcher Kim Nilsson did pick out accounts at BTC-e and Bitcoinica.

Xapo partners with Taringa! for Latin American audience

Bitcoin wallet service Xapo, Inc. announced a partnership with Taringa! (Digital Ground LLC), the largest social media network created in Latin America. Taringra! boasts over 27 million registered users and serves a primarily Spanish speaking audience all of whom will now be connected with bitcoin via this partnership.

Through Taringa!’s platform, top content creators can now earn bitcoin via the Revenue Sharing Program (website in Spanish). Furthermore the entire user base of the social network will also receive bits each day to share and earn—this will integrate with Taringa!’s social media platform where users give “points” to media creators they like and those points are tied to bitcoin.

Xapo claims this partnership represents the largest bitcoin integration the community has seen yet essentially bringing 27 million people on board via Xapo’s platform.

Bitcoins earned by Taringa! users will integrate directly with Xapo’s secure bitcoin wallet which users can then use in the bitcoin ecosystem. Being a primarily Latin American audience this means a user population with high smart phone use but relatively low banking infrastructure. Meaning this is an opportunity to introduce millions of networked users to the utility of bitcoin as a payment system.

CryptoMoms celebrates first anniversary

The CryptoMoms forum launched April 16, 2014 and recently celebrated its first anniversary as a space about encouraging women to participate in cryptocurrency. The site sports a forum, blog, and a set of resources expected from any Bitcoin 101 site including “What is cryptocurrency” posts as well as where to get and exchange crypto coins.

The press release sent to FoxexMinute claims the forum alone attracts up to 272 visitors daily and cites that it is currently estimated the cryptocurrency community is only 10% women. This tends to speak to the success of CryptoMoms in providing a successful space for women to gather to speak about cryptocurrency.

Tip picked up via ForexMinute.

Pre-announcing B&C Exchange, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange

An experienced team from three other well-known projects such as Peercoin and NuBits development—including Jordan Lee and sigmike–have banded together to develop a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. The pre-announcement for B&C Exchange, with the aims to become a fully decentralized software-driven exchange, posted this week on the BitcoinTalk forums.

“B&C Exchange will be an open-source decentralized exchange that completes cryptocurrency trades between users by utilizing multisig signers that compete for blockchain rewards based on their effectiveness and honesty,” BCExchange on BitcoinTalk writes. “Trades will occur using real cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and NuBits, as opposed to artificial proxy cryptoassets like those found in NXT or BitShares.”

The exchange will also provide equity ownership to members who hold a specialized crypto-based equity tokens called BlockShares (BKS) and receive dividends via BlockCredits (BKC), a cryptocurrency used to pay for trades on B&C. A detailed explanation of how the shares and credits work is in the BitcoinTalk thread; this sort of cryptoequity has been seen before in the cryptocurrency ecosystem with platforms such as NuShares.

Development has not yet started and funding will come from a NuShares auction. It is estimated by the team that they will need $200,000 USD to fund the team of developers and create a professional product.

UK-based exchange Coinmate.io launches

A brand new UK-based exchange Coinmate.io (Confirmo Ltd.) just announced its entry into the bitcoin ecosystem.  As an exchange, CoinMate offers trading with a 0.2% fee, but free deposits and withdrawals for Euros, Czech Koruna, and the Polish Zloty. The site launched as of April 15th and has been trading at low volume ever since.

Although Inside Bitcoins reports an April 15th launch, CoinMate has been operating and open to the public since October 20th, 2014. And, as a promotion, provided fee sharing during a giveaway to its top 10 highest volume traders in March 2015. This fee-sharing to top traders is a listed feature of CoinMate.

Other features include instant ordering, market ordering, BTC and USD trades, and numerous deposit and withdrawal options. CoinMate mentions rapid withdrawals via OKPay as well as CoinMate vouchers.

As for security, accounts are protected by two-factor authentication and hashed passwords. All bitcoin deposits are placed into cold storage and 95% of all bitcoin reserves are held offline and distributed to multiple locations. This is to limit the damage potential of a large-scale theft (as has hit other exchanges in 2015.) CoinMate also claims that its “software is developed and managed by one of the most reputable banking and financial software companies.”

The site requires first-time visitors to submit a captcha, but after that the system gets out of the way.

Developers have access to an API that allows secure access to the order book, ticker, transactions, balance, and numerous other functions.

 Video: Q&A with Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn 

This is a clip from CoinScrum 2015 in London, recorded by IamSatoshi of YouTube. Gavin Andresen is the chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation and Bitcoin core developer; Mike Hearn is another Bitcoin core developer, ex-Google developer, who created the crowdfunding platform Lighthouse.

Photo credit: via reddit member huevos_de_acero; and Bitcoin IMG_1924 via photopin (license)