Step aside Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters Eikon is adding Bitcoin to its market index—and citing popular customer demand as well as expanded interest in the cryptocurrency as reasons why. This last week, Overstock.com also consolidated its Bitcoin-friendly position when its CEO mentioned expanding BTC payments to international customers; and the company is also planning to offer bonuses in bitcoin to employees.

On the adoption front, The Wikimedia Foundation, parent of the Wikipedia project, will start accepting bitcoin donations in the near future; and Twitch.tv, dominant video game streaming website, already takes bitcoin for subscriptions.

The past few weeks saw Bitcoin market price fall from the mid $600s but many outlets are reporting now that the price has stabilized around the $580-$590 band and has stayed there for almost two weeks.

Thomson Reuters Eikon adds Bitstamp Bitcoin-to-USD to market index

Due to strong customer demand, Thomson Reuters, international media firm and parent company of Reuters, has added Bitcoin to its trading market index platform Eikon. Traded rates and volumes as well as top of book quotes are now available via Bitstamp’s BTC index through the platform.

Thomson Reuters cites the expanding interest in cryptocurrency globally, adoption by companies such as Dish Network and Expedia, and recognition by governments of bitcoin as a valid means of exchange as further reasons it has added BTC price to the platform.

This move follows Bloomberg’s addition of Bitcoin to its market index platform, to which Thomson Reuters is a competitor.

Thomson Reuters Eikon has added these new features: traded rates and volume (in BTC), top of book bid/ask; daily summarized open, high, low, close; intra-day and end of day charting for trades, quotes and volumes; and traded rate and volume for the last three years.

Overstock.com to bring Bitcoin to employees and extend payments globally

One of the first major corporations to accept bitcoins, Overstock.com is continuing to show its Bitcoin-friendly colors by offering to pay employee bonuses in bitcoin and extend bitcoin payments globally.

According to an article on Mashable.com, Judd Bagley, a rep for Overstock, said that the company is looking into how to offer bitcoin bonuses to employees by the end of the year. Employees who opt for such a bonus will receive a premium over what would be offered for cash-only.

To date, bitcoin payments have only been available for US customers, but this is about to change. During a TV interview, Patrick Byrne, CEO Overstock.com, announced plans to expand bitcoin acceptance to international customers in four to six weeks. The interview took place on the Russian-news RT’s “Boom or Bust”:

“In about one month to six weeks, we’ll be introducing bitcoin to our international customers, so [customers], including those in Russia, will be able to pay in bitcoins,” said Byrne.

Although Overstock’s bitcoin sales only represent 0.25% of the average day’s sales, the total amount transacted has exceeded $2 million since Overstock.com began accepting the cryptocurrency in January this year. Overstock posted revenues of $673.7 million in the first half of 2014.

Twitch accepts Bitcoin for Turbo

Twitch is the premier streaming website for video gamers, outshining pretty much every other streaming outfit in the market. August 1st, Twitch began accepting bitcoins as payment for Twitch Turbo subscriptions.

Twitch Turbo is a subscription service for livestreaming that adds a number of quality-of-life enhancements including: no advertisements in streams, a custom emoticon set in chat, a special badge (a battery with a jolt through it), and an extended set of colors to display in the chat.

At $8.99/mo. this would cost bitcoin users about 0.0154 BTC (at the current exchange rate.)

Wikimedia now accepts Bitcoin

As of July 30th, the Wikimedia Foundation has begun accepting bitcoin donations. According to the Foundation, the change has come after members of the community began requesting bitcoin as a payment option. The Wikimedia Foundation runs the famous community-written encyclopedia Wikipedia.

As with many other businesses who have stepped up to take bitcoin, the Wikimedia Foundation had to become better educated about the legal and financial ramifications.

#Bitcoin2014 – Panel: Stepping Stones to Adoption