1. Bter Hacked, 50M NXT Stolen

More than 50 million NXT, one of the most popular and more powerful alternative digital currencies on the market, has been stolen from the popular Chinese based exchange Bter, as reported on Ian DeMartino on Friday. At current rates, 50 million NXT is worth 3355.73 BTC or roughly USD $1,701,015.

2. Wall Street Journal Reports eBay and PayPal in Talks with Coinbase

Ian DeMartino reported Friday that PayPal and its parent company, eBay, were talking with Coinbase to begin adoption of cryptocurrencies, according to the WSJ.

“According to the Wall Street Journal's report, this would potentially allow bitcoin payments for services that use Paypal's Braintree division to accept Bitcoin. This would include Airbnb and Uber.”

3. US Consumer Watchdog Warns Against Bitcoin’s Risks

Bogdan Ulm reported Tuesday that the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau threw around the phrase “Wild West” when describing the risks associated with using Bitcoin.

“Global policy counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, Jim Harper, mentioned that the warning was ‘pretty standard,’ and that it was somewhat ‘helpful to the extent that it informs consumers without scaring them.’”

4. Infowars Store Accepting Bitcoins

America’s leading conspiracy theorist Alex Jones published a video Wednesday in which he said his radio show, Infowars, would begin accepting Bitcoin payments at its store.

“I thought it was interesting because it was a cryptocurrency,” Jones said. “It would directly challenge the private IMF and World Bank that own and control the private Federal Reserve with its own fiat system that only enriches the banking families that set it up in 1913. So, anything that is a threat to that, I like it.”

5. GAW Buys Controlling Stake in ZenMiner

We reported Thursday that the Geniuses at Work Corporation bought a majority stake in ZenMiner for US$8 million.

“We're investing heavily into bringing Bitcoin to the masses," GAW’s CEO, Josh Garza, said. "We’ve been impressed with how rapidly ZenMiner took over the hosted mining market. After we saw their technology, we knew we had to bring them in."

Elsewhere

It’s been a bad year for weekly news magazines that try to report on Bitcoin. On Tuesday, Time Magazine got all smug over the abovementioned CPFB’s warning (“Moral of the story? Using bitcoin may have its benefits, but don’t let it be your fool’s gold. Because ‘if it’s too good to be true,’ the report said, ‘it just may be.’”).

Then, it went and dropped this gem: “According to Bitcoincharts.com, there are more than 13 million pieces of the company’s virtual currency around the world.”

If that left a bad taste in your mouth, try this: Nick Lambert and David Irvine of MaidSafe were on the Keiser Report.

Market activity

Bitcoin’s exchange rate against the dollar fell sharply this week. The first drop, as ForexMinute noted, was when the price dipped from about $591 to about $573, which coincided to the hour with Ethereum selling off 1,000 BTC.

But then the price just kept falling. By Friday, 1 BTC was trading for just more than $500 on most exchanges. Correspondingly, the USD exchange trade volume rose sharply. Thursday saw a 60-day high in trade volume at around $13.35 million. Early Saturday, the price has been hovering around the US$495 mark.