In a response to immense customer demand, Thomson Reuters added bitcoin/USD prices from the BitStamp exchange to Eikon, the company announced Monday. This comes a few months after Bloomberg incorporated bitcoin pricing and market news to its professional data terminal service.
Moving forward, bitcoin investors can learn about traded rates and volumes, daily pricing summaries, bitcoin history for last three years and time and sales viewer to see VWAP and buy/sell. Although this may seem useless for the novice bitcoiner, this is a tremendous service for the more seasoned and serious bitcoin investor and Wall Street professionals.
Reuters’s latest implementation just highlights how much bitcoin is becoming a part of the mainstream financial community, which isn’t surprising considering that bitcoin’s daily volume is between $60 and $70 million. Experts agree that this helps further legitimize bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry.
“With online vendors such as Expedia and Dish Network accepting bitcoins as a form of payment, the bitcoin market is experiencing a surge in popularity, with many government officials beginning to recognise it as a valid means of exchange,” said Thomson Reuters in a statement. “The phenomenon of crypto currencies needs to be monitored as it brings on several implications on industry assets and practices (such as payment systems and the role of the banks), but also on regulatory ground (links with anti-money laundering legislations).”
The news agency presented the case that Wall Street will want to monitor the development of the bitcoin industry, even if they do not have any direct investing involvement in the peer-to-peer decentralized virtual currency.
In the meantime, interested users can try out a free demonstration offer of Eikon and navigate and peruse throughout the extensive service.
As previously noted, Bloomberg added bitcoin to its financial terminals in April, and one executive had mixed feelings toward the virtual currency.
“It’s worth noting that we are not endorsing or guaranteeing bitcoin, and investors cannot trade bitcoin or other digital currencies on Bloomberg. Global interest in digital currencies has undoubtedly increased, but these instruments still represent a fraction of fiat currency usage,” wrote Tod Van Name, Global Head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities at Bloomberg, in a blog post.
“Reaction from governments around the world to digital currencies has been mixed and the regulatory environment remains very unclear. And while bitcoin has thus far survived intense media scrutiny, scandal and wild price swings, there certainly is no guarantee that bitcoin will persevere.”
At the time of this writing, bitcoin is still trading just under $600, and has done so for the past couple of weeks. In fact, over the past couple months, the digital currency’s large fluctuations have been quite small and its pricing has remained relatively stable, an incredible feat from just a year ago when its value would change $50 in a day.
