Patrick Murck has confirmed the departure of Jim Harper from the Bitcon Fundation. Harper, who joined the foundation in March of this year, set to work building a bridge between Bitcoin and governments of the world. As it turns out, spinning your wheels or as Murck puts it – trail blazing – is too costly an endeavour and the foundation will now shift its focus from lobbying and back to Core development.

Harper's departure had been rumoured for several weeks, which was somewhat fuelled by his intention to run for a seat on the Board of Directors. If successful in his attempt, Harper stated that his first action will be to:

"..insist that the board's minutes are a complete summary of its discussions and actions rather than the cursory sketch we see now."

More recently, Harper complained about the foundation's inability to schedule the upcoming election in a timely manner despite announcing it back in October. With that schedule having been announced today, Harper's concerns that the upcoming election might be messy and leave little time for candidates to be named, vetted, and considered, have come to fruition. Despite these problems, it appears that Harper is intent on going back for more.