Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is now one of the currencies on Oanda (a professional forex trading and exchange rates services company).

Try it:
http://www.oanda.com/lang/de/currency/converter/
 :o

Great! I regularly use it to convert USD/EUR and I know that it's a quite popular website.

Fascinating.  Looks like they've been at it for awhile.

I wonder what their lag is when they get busy...

cool but no historic prices yet

Cool. If they added BTC pairs to their platform that would be pretty crazy.

Looks like you create your own pairs, no?

On the converter yes, but not on their trading platform.

Since they give the quote for whatever pairs you pick, the USD/BTC shows a 0.00779 BTC per dollar.   I guess I just haven't seen that pair order in a while and it shocked me a little.

This is amazing news!

OANDA is probably the most respected forex trading platform available to retail clients.

Oanda accepts credit cards immediate funding up to $10,000USD and Paypal how long until they're frauded out of all their coins

Also:

So how do I pay in with my card, buy coins and then withdraw those coins back to my card. Guess you are buying virtual coins and don't get to keep them

I think once it's on their converter it's only a matter of time before they add it to the trading platform, too.

The aren't exchanging coins. All they've done is add BTC to their FX conversion utility. No trading possible.

Maybe. There are tons of currencies on the converter that they don't offer on their platform though. I could maybe see them adding it as a deposit method.

Technically, it wouldn't be hard for them to do so and there are no legal or political hurdles as with some state currencies.

Ahh yes it's just for the calculator. Too bad because they offer zero fee money transfers I've used in the past, you only pay for exchange rate spread. Dump in coins, send local funds anywhere

If, as you quote Oanda, this remains true...

And if, as Mageant posits:


...they add it as a deposit method:

Then they become essentially an exchange for bears only.

BTC in > convert to dollars > wait for price to go down > convert back and withdraw BTC.

Makes no sense.  If they accept BTC in any way, they are almost forced to provide a full exchange - or lose money on fees buying the BTC to pay out.  Am I missing something?

Am I the only person who thought this was a topic about Bitcoin being featured on  a radio show?

Cool news, though.

Not anymore they don't. Regulations forced that service down. See "Important Notice: fxGlobalTransfer, for third parties, has been discontinued". http://fxglobaltransfer.oanda.com/

The banking cartel are at war with the people. Thanks to Bitcoin, they no longer have the upper hand.

I would love to see BTC traded on Oanda, they have one of the best trading platforms in the world. Amazing technical analysis tools, and no you don't get "lagged" although reality is there will always be slippage in high volume market moves.  Forex trading typically uses a LOT of leverage and most people lose their initial investment.  Bitcoin needs to stabilize before it can be traded in a market like Oanda (or perhaps being traded on major exchanges can create the stability that Bitcoin so badly needs).

I wouldn't recommend forex trading because I don't like the math on it, but still you all should check out their trading platform by creating a free game account.

People on reddit have posted about Oanda support telling them actual conversion isn't in the books anytime soon.

Can't you buy BTC as well then on Oanda when this goes live

If it goes live, yes - but if you originally deposit in USD, then that's how you have to withdraw:  in USD.  Not a lot of bulls will want that - I certainly wouldn't - and the time and transaction fees spent putting your fiat somewhere else so you could buy BTC with them would seriously hurt the bottom line.  So it would look like:

USD in > buy BTC > cash out in USD when exchange rate goes up > send USD somewhere else to buy BTC > withdraw BTC

No thanks.

but cant they send BTC >>> and exchange out through GOX

BTC is not covered by such regulations

and you would not be withdrawing USD either so its ok

....aaaaand it's gone?

Did Oanda take it down?

To good to be true  :( No BTC on Onanda :-[

Bitcoin now on the Oanda currency converter:
http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/

Thanks Mageant! As the product manager for the OANDA currency converter, I'm excited that we've added Bitcoin to our currency converter. You can read more about our announcement on our blog: http://www.oanda.com/corp/forex-lab-notes/2013/apr/22/why-we-added-bitcoin-oanda-currency-converter-1920/.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments! I'm looking forward to feedback from the community.

Chris

Feedback?

From your blog linked in the parent:


Some people get in the swimming pool one careful, shuddering toe at a time.

Some people just jump the hell in.

Failure is always an option, but...

...which of those two types of people make the great fortunes of this world - and which become 'comfortable'?

Eh.  You pays yer money and you takes yer shot...

Bitcoin is not showing up in the OANDA Currency Converter dropdown box for me right now. Im looking under "B". Am I doing something wrong?

Strange, it should be there.

Do you mind clearing your cache? If that doesn't work, can you fill out http://www.oanda.com/site/contact/feedback? I'll reply and try to figure out why it's not showing up for you.

Thanks!

Chris

I tried clearing cache. Still not showing bitcoin in dropdown box. Also I tried two different browsers Firefox and Chrome coming from two different IP numbers. Still not showing.

It is not showing for me either.

I would love BTC on OANDA, I have used your platform over many years and its generally very good, and stable

You can make a killing with gox which is at best a "part time" competitor.....

as long as you let people transfer BTC out easily

Is it showing up for anyone right now?

Not working for me any time I try.

I created a ticket with OANDA Technical Support, and they are asking for operating system and browser, but before I reply them, lets see if its working for anyone at all?

http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/ works for me. Using Mozilla Firefox on Win7.

Great. Is there anyone for whom it works who uses any kind of a GNU/Linux system?

Works fine on Ubuntu 13.04 with Chrome.

The historical prices by graph are really wrong.....must be daily averaged???? but even that seems wrong

Selling 130.000 USD    
   you get 1.00086 BTC
Buying 130.000 USD    
   you pay 1.00086 BTC

Warning: converter full of FAIL.

Just need one legitimate forex provider to start trading BTC and all of the other exchanges can go away.

FTFY  ;D

Obviously XE (http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=XBT&To=USD) followed in their footsteps and even though they got the XBT wrong(or not? iso?), they are doing a much better job at it(and will let you choose your language ;) ):
https://i.imgur.com/wOgNXol.png
https://i.imgur.com/lwHkxw1.png

cool, btc on xe :)

It is BTC, not XBT  :)

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/six-interbank-clearing-include-a-symbol-for-bitcoin-in-iso-4217
Not saying it should be this or that, but obviously the market leaders have a different approach to it.

I like Oanda, but you've got to remember that a broker != an exchange.

A broker has a price-feed which they take from an exchange - they act as a middle-man between you and the exchange they post your trades on, which has limited value when you can trade directly with the exchange yourself.

That is correct but for retail customers who trade Forex on Oanda, it isn't like you can go to a forex exchange to trade more directly. ie: ETrade is a middle man between you and the NYSE, but you can't go to the NYSE directly to bypass the broker.

In the case of something like BTC there's no centralized single exchange they'd be front us, so they would need to match buy/sell orders and act as their own exchange, basically.

Wow bitcoins on xe. That is big news. I think it deserves its own thread!

I highly doubt that. It's quite likely they'll just use MtGox for the feed and for the orders as that is the biggest exchange, as the other forex brokers trading bitcoin have.

The only exchange/broker combo that I know of is Kraken.