1. Wedbush Securities Announces Partnership with Buttercoin

A Wall Street investment firm has agreed to partner with Buttercoin, Carlo Caraluzzo reported Tuesday, perhaps symbolizing real interest in Bitcoin businesses among Wall Street investors.

"We are impressed with Buttercoin in many regards, notably that it provides reliable, trustworthy and excellent trade execution, and most importantly that it has a US banking relationship," Sheri Kaiserman, Head of Equities at Wedbush Securities, said. "We see cryptocurrency technology as disruptive to the financial services industry as the Internet was to communications."

2. Spanish Bank Invests in Decentralized Exchange Coinffeine

Bankinter, one of the largest commercial banks in Spain, announced it had invested in a Bitcoin exchange, William Suberg reported Monday.

“The investment itself is the ninth in a series in the Entrepreneurship Program of Bankinter’s venture capital firm, the Bankinter Foundation of Innovation, a scheme set up to fund technologically innovative startups in the space.

“Coinffeine, as Cointelegraph reported back in May, is in itself developing new ground within the cryptocurrency exchange sphere by attempting to facilitate P2P transactions without the need of a centralized exchange transaction handler.”

3. Brawker Implements Multisig As Default for Transactions

Brawker, an online platform that lets Bitcoin users buy goods otherwise only available for purchase in fiat money, will now be using multisignature escrow for its transactions by default, Amanda B. Johnson reported Monday.

“‘When you create an account at Brawker you are not required to deposit any bitcoins,’ Brawker wrote on its blog. ‘Instead, your funds will go through a multisignature address controlled by at least two of three different keys. The Bitcoin spender receives a key, the buyer has the second one, and Brawker the third key.’”

4. US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Claims Authority over Bitcoin Transactions

Carlo Caraluzzo reported Wednesday that the CFTC, created in 1974 by the US government to protect investors against manipulation in the futures markets, claimed it had legal jurisdiction over Bitcoin trading.

“It has not been tested, but I do believe we have the authority because Bitcoin, by I think a very rational reading of our statute, classifies as a commodity and the definition of a commodity under the Commodity Exchange Act," CFTC Commissioner Mark Wetjen said.

5. Coinbase Announces Tipping Tool, Partnership with Mozilla

It’s been a big week for Coinbase, which rolled out a new tipping widget, set up Bitcoin donations for the Mozilla Foundation, and teamed up with RewardsPay to open up a whole new platform on which users can spend their bitcoins, Alyssa Hertig reported Friday.

“Many people are excited for Bitcoin's potential for micropayments — transactions under US$1 — which such a tool could help along. Right now, Coinbase says that over 30% of transactions are less than US$1, hinting that there's more demand to be found.”

Elsewhere

● We have some reliable numbers from a few sources now, courtesy of CoinDesk, on how profitable their BTMs are (or aren’t).

● In case you missed it, here is Patrick Byrne speaking at the CATO Institute.

● Shoutout to redditor /u/smeggletoot, who spoofed a recent Western Union ad, and it just makes the legacy money transfer service seem … really sad.

Market activity

And just like that, we’re back to talking about the falling price of bitcoins against the dollar. We started the week with 1 BTC trading for around US$384, and that support level of about US$380 looked fairly reliable until Wednesday. Since mid-week, bitcoins have lost nearly 10% of their value against the dollar.

Take a look at the second chart, which shows the number of on-blockchain transactions. The first three days of this week looked almost exactly like the first three days last week: 85,000 transactions Monday, a couple thousand more Tuesday, then a slight increase Wednesday.

This week, though, the number of transactions dropped between Wednesday and Thursday, whereas last week they skyrocketed, which we concluded last week was a result of trading activity.

In that third chart, you see transaction volume on the leeward side of last week’s mountain settling back to familiar levels, with an uptick in volume toward the end of the week that corresponds to the quick price drop.

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