BitPay

has lured one of the key volunteer bitcoin developers to work for it full time. Jeff Garzik will be coding for the company, which will also allow him to develop software for the broader bitcoin community.

Garzik has worked at Red Hat, a developer of LINUX software, since 2002, serving as principal software engineer. He has also been a core bitcoin developer since the beginning, working on the Satoshi client, and is listed as one of seven such developers on bitcoin.org. He founded the site Bitcoin Watch, which provides real-time snapshots of bitcoin market data.

His full-time employment is a sign of Bitcoin’s growth, as few of the other core developers are paid for their bitcoin work. He has long been an advocate for the crypto currency, and believes that it is the first of many.

"Bitcoin, the euro, the US dollar, China's RMV will all exist on an even playing field," he has said. "You may choose which type of currency you hold in your wallet, and transact with."

His appointment is a sign of BitPay's growing fortunes. The bitcoin payment processor also hired Brian Krohn as chief financial officer, and Chaz Ferguson as a software engineer, bringing its total number of full-time employees to 10. It is growing quickly, having added four employees in April, using money from a seed funding round in January.