Last Saturday, a massive earthquake struck the country of Nepal inflicting untold damage and displacing thousands of people, read on to see how you can assist in relief efforts and what the Bitcoin community is doing.

Also in the news, Coinbase is expanding in the UK and adding option for exchanging bitcoins for BGP and EUR. The web-wallet service Circle appears to be seeking more money. Purse.io, a service that helps people exchange Amazon gift money for bitcoins and bitcoins for Amazon products, has integrated Erik Voorhees’s ShapeShift enabling the deposit of numerous altcoins.

Finally, Bitcoin Core version 0.10.1 was just released with a number of bug and crash fixes. Changelog and download links below.

CoinTelegraph BTC Relief Fund for Nepal earthquake victims, and others

A terrifying earthquake, magnitude 7.8, shook the ground in Nepal on Saturday leaving in its wake untold damage and thousands dead—current death toll is still rising but is estimated above 5,200. Also remaining are thousands more survivors with no homes, utilities, or much-needed support.

The Bitcoin community immediately began reaching out to the Red Cross (who began accepting bitcoin donations in November last year via BitPay) and others in an attempt to donate to the relief efforts including via services such as ChangeTip.

Also on the front lines of the Bitcoin community, CoinTelegraph, a rising bitcoin news source, launched a relief operation in cooperation with Bitcoin Alliance India to collect donations.

According to CoinTelegraph, by Tuesday the Red Cross had already received 325 donations totaling 11 BTC (a value of approximately $2,400 USD.)

Vishal Gupta, one of the co-founders at the Bitcoin Alliance India, said about Bitcoin’s place in relief efforts:

“Although Bitcoin has no absolute advantage – the cost of sending money is secondary to speed – in this case the community can stand up and be counted. Tell the world that help is currency-neutral. All you need is intent.”

If you would like to assist with Nepal relief efforts, with whatever amount of BTC you can send, visit these donation resources: BitPay, ChangeTip, Red Cross.

Also joining the bitcoin charity outreach is Bitlanders, a social-media platform that pays bitcoin to content creators, provides BTC donations to AmeriCares, an international emergency response organization currently also involved with the Nepal earthquake relief.

Coinbase expands to the UK

Bitcoin wallet and merchant services company Coinbase, Inc. just announced via its blog that the company is expanding to the United Kingdom, including the ability to trade via the Coinbase Exchange and deposit/withdraw coins with BGP from Coinbase Wallet.

This expansion also brings the addition of BTC/GBP and BTC/EUR currency pairs to the exchange.

Purse.io integrates Erik Voorheees’s ShapeShift

Purse.io, a service that allows shoppers on Amazon.com to exchange bitcoins for products, just integrated ShapeShift.io, a highly simplified bitcoin and altcoin exchange that allows the rapid trade of cryptocurrencies without needing to register.

With this integration, Purse.io purchasers will be able to deposit over 25 different digital assets including Tether, Dash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, BitShares, and Counterparty. Prior to this integration, Purse.io only exchanged in bitcoins.

Tip via press release.

Circle seeks new venture capital

Fortune is reporting that Circle Internet Financial Ltd., a bitcoin web-wallet service which competes with Coinbase and Blockchain.info, is “in the midst of raising around $40 million at a pre-money valuation of approximately $200 million.”

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire is said to be at the center of this upcoming VC round and it will include both the participation of venture capital and Wall Street firms.

A Circle spokeswoman declined to comment except to say that news would be forthcoming this week, although not if the financing information would be part of that.

Bitcoin Core 0.10.1 released

Yesterday marked the release of Bitcoin Core 0.10.1, which is a minor upgrade release, but it contains a number of bug and crash fixes. As with all releases, it is recommended that you upgrade if you are currently running 0.10.0. You may download the updated version from Bitcoin.org.

Discussion and changelog information are available via Reddit and on the BitcoinTalk forum.

Including a tidbit from Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin Core developer and Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, about why Bitcoin Core is still at a major version of 0.

He explains, “Because the p2p networking code isn’t robust enough to call it ‘1.0’ (it is an accreted set of hacks to mitigate DoS/Sybil attacks; it should keep track of resources used by each peer, and prioritize work so no peer can overwhelm CPU or bandwidth or disk usage).”

Andresen adds that the wallet code also needs updates to match best practices.