OANDA Adds Bitcoin to its Currency Converter, BIG Yawn

Forex Forex Foreign exchange or forex is the act of converting one nation’s currency into another nation’s currency (that possesses a different currency); for example, the converting of British Pounds into US Dollars, and vice versa. The exchange of currencies can be done over a physical counter, such as at a Bureau de Change, or over the internet via broker platforms, where currency speculation takes place, known as forex trading.The foreign exchange market, by its very nature, is the world’s largest tradi Foreign exchange or forex is the act of converting one nation’s currency into another nation’s currency (that possesses a different currency); for example, the converting of British Pounds into US Dollars, and vice versa. The exchange of currencies can be done over a physical counter, such as at a Bureau de Change, or over the internet via broker platforms, where currency speculation takes place, known as forex trading.The foreign exchange market, by its very nature, is the world’s largest tradi Read this Term broker OANDA has finally announced that it has added Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term into its currency converter, via a blog posting by VP of Trading, Courtney Gibson. The addition was rumored a few weeks ago, with users seeing bitcoin appear and then disappear from the converter. (Interestingly, even after launching it, pricing still doesn’t always appear on the main real time converter, but is readily available on the ‘Historical Rates’) In the blog post, Gibson states “We recently added Bitcoin to the OANDA Currency Converter. We admire it as an interesting experiment in financial innovation and, because we're financial innovators too, we share the excitement such disruptive technologies can bring to mature industries and markets.”

While the rationale makes sense, and at Forex Magnates we have published a similar opinion that bitcoins are more than just a currency, and part of the future of the digitalizing of money transfer, Gibson added that the broker has no plans to launch further bitcoin products and said “Despite the increased awareness around the cyber currency, OANDA has no plans at this time to introduce Bitcoin as a tradeable currency to OANDA’s fxTrade platform, or to accept Bitcoin as a method for funding fxTrade accounts. By adding Bitcoin to our Currency Converter, we are acknowledging – in a very real way – the wide-ranging interest Bitcoin has generated as a virtual payment system.”

As a technology driven broker, it is a little disappointing that OANDA isn’t planning on trying to become a leader in the bitcoin trading space. Also, as mentioned in the blog post, OANDA’s CEO K Duker provided a positive opinion of bitcoins in his Reddit AMA earlier this year. Therefore, with bitcoins hitting OANDA’s radar well ahead of the rest of the market, launching solely a currency converter with no additional plans, isn’t filling any meaningful gap in the market.

With the exception of IG's bitcoin binary product launch last week, major forex brokers have yet to get too involved with the currency, although many of them are having internal discussion about it. As such, it will be interesting to see if a bitcoin driven platform will be able to grab the lion's share of the market while brokers remain on the sidelines.