Users of Yahoo Finance can now buy and sell Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum on the platform. The capability came with no fanfare. Yahoo decided to make the feature active one day with no announcement, by just adding buy/sell options on the platform for these crypto projects.
News of this offering has caught the attention of many, including Founder of Morgan Creek Financial, Anthony Pompliano.
You can now buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin on Yahoo Finance.
THE VIRUS IS SPREADING 🚀
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) August 29, 2018
Morgan Creek also recently made news as they announced the launch of their own crypto fund.
Industry guru Charlie Lee also had the following to say on the announcement.
You can now buy/sell LTC on @YahooFinance. Mass adoption is achieved one step at a time. 🐔🚀 pic.twitter.com/RuF7XR4zTX
— Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) August 29, 2018
What is it?
Visited worldwide by investors of all ilk, Yahoo Finance has traditionally been used as a means to monitor stock market data. This changed roughly one year ago when Yahoo announced that they would begin to facilitate buying/selling options for various assets. In addition to this announcement coming to fruition, Yahoo has also announced their intentions to expand these services to various nations such as Japan. For now, the service appears restricted to those that reside in the United States.
What has changed?
In a service that will surely expand to other cryptocurrencies in time, Yahoo has decided to set their initial focus on market incumbents Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Due to their development, and clear stance in the eyes of the SEC, these three offerings are often seen as safe.
Market data can still be obtained for a variety of other crypto offering via Yahoo Finance. Expansion of buy/sell options isn’t likely to take place until more regulatory clarity is afforded regarding other projects.
Market Reaction
Curiously, the markets did not seem to react favourably to this announcement. Despite being a substantial move towards mass adoption, there was little to no positive effect seen upon news breaking. This also occurred recently when ICE announced the creation of the Bakkt platform. At that time, news of the ground-breaking platform was also glossed over by investors.
On a positive side-note, we have also seen a decrease in market volatility in relation to negative news as well. Just recently we have seen a string of continued anti-crypto actions on behalf of China. In 2017, such news would have resulted in wild market swings due to fear. Much like the minimal market effect seen be Bakkt and Yahoo Finance, these negative stories also did not do much to swing sentiment.
Regardless of their short-term market effect, developments such as Yahoo Finance supporting crypto offerings are great to see. These features will do nothing but further expose the industry to investors that may not have had their curiosity yet piqued.
