Bloomberg decides to add three altcoins – Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple – to its terminals after the cryptocurrencies showing significant strength in the market, this week.
By Bhushan Akolkar
Updated
3 mins read
In the past two months, there has been a growing interest for cryptocurrencies within institutional investors especially after the announcement of Bitcoin futures contract by CME Group starting two days later on December 18. In addition to Bitcoin, altcoins have performed significantly in the past few weeks and have pulled the overall market valuations to new highs above $500 billion.
A major rally has been witnessed in altcoins like Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP) with all three hitting their new all-time high this week. This has caught the attention of several finance professionals and institutional investors alike. The result is that Bloomberg’s terminal service which is followed by several investment houses and major banks worldwide has decided to add prices for all of these altcoins.
Lily Katz, Bloomberg’s publications journalist confirmed these additions on Thursday by tweeting:
Come one, come all — @TheTerminal has officially added ether, litecoin and ripple pricing pic.twitter.com/RDGchH5QEP
— Lily Katz (@LilyKatz) December 14, 2017
Bloomberg, for the moment, has declined to comment on this matter but a person familiar with the matter said that the altcoins were added as a useful feature for several foreign-exchange traders. The person said that the data on the terminal is obtained from the prices provided by popular exchange Bitstamp.
There is no doubt that Bitcoin remains as the strongest cryptocurrency right now in the market, altcoins like Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple have emerged as a formidable force to reckon with. Also, Ethereum’s blockchain network is said to be more versatile than that of Bitcoin’s as it allows to create several decentralized applications on its platform.
As a result, Ethereum’s platform has been the most preferred destination for ICOs and startups to build their ideas. Ethereum started the year at a mere price of $8 and now is trading at above $700, a whopping increase of over 8000% in just a years time. As on date, Ethereum has a market cap of over $67 billion.
While on the other hand, if we see the journey of Litecoin, this altcoin has grown by over 200% just in past one week and is currently trading above $300. Litecoin too has surged phenomenally in the last one year. Starting at just $4, Litecoin too has appreciated over 7000% in one year. Litecoin is often called as “Bitcoin Hedge” in the crypto-community as many believe that Litecoin’s blockchain offers more stability in comparison to Bitcoin’s and also addresses critical issues of low transaction costs and higher transaction speeds.
Mati Greenspan, a senior market analyst for eToro said: “Litecoin is more scalable by nature and with bitcoins mempool currently flooded with unconfirmed transactions Litecoin is looking much better than BTC as a medium of exchange.” The recent rally in Litecoin has pushed its market cap above $16 billion.
Although joining the party late, Ripple has surged by over 300% this week touching a new all-time high of $0.8922 according to CoinMarketCap. Ripple is working in coordination with several global banks with an aim to bring the distributed ledger technology into the mainstream by replacing the existing SWIFT banking systems, Ripple’s technology has a better advantage over SWIFT in terms of fast transaction speed and lower transaction costs. Recently, banks in South Korea and Japan have also announced to test cross-border payments using Ripple technology.
Bloomberg’s decision to include altcoins is a testimony to the fact that cryptocurrencies are slowly entering the mainstream ledger transactions.
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Bhushan is a FinTech enthusiast and holds a good flair in understanding financial markets. His interest in economics and finance draw his attention towards the new emerging Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency markets. He is continuously in a learning process and keeps himself motivated by sharing his acquired knowledge. In free time he reads thriller fictions novels and sometimes explore his culinary skills.
