Opera’s built-in cryptocurrency price converter is actually pretty useful

Earlier this year Opera announced it is updating its built-in currency converter to support cryptocurrency, starting with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).

The feature has been there for a couple of months now, but it seems it has remained under the radar for most crypto-enthusiasts – which is why we decided to give it a spin.

For those unfamiliar, the currency converter essentially lets you convert fiat currencies to BTC, BCH, ETH or LTC by simply highlighting the original amount – without leaving the site or using third-party converters.

Here is how it looks:

Opera users can enable the feature if they follow these steps:

• Head to Preferences
• Select the ‘Browser’ sub-section
• There you will find the ‘User interface’ field
• Tick the ‘On text selection convert currency” box and select your currency of choice.
• Done!

Having said that, the tool is far from perfect. For one, it works only in cases when there is a currency sign to detect (like $ or €). This means that anytime a website delineates money with currency acronyms (like USD or EUR), the built-in currency converter just won’t work.

This practically means that the feature doesn’t support converting other cryptocurrencies. While it will convert fiat currencies to your preferred cryptocurrency of choice (as long there is a currency sign to detect), it won’t convert one cryptocurrency into another. So you will have to resort to Coin Market Cap or other price monitoring services in such cases after all.

The other minor nuisance is that the feature will only take into account digits:the tool still works if you highlight spelled out amounts, it but won’t factor in words like “thousand,” “million,” and “billion.” For instance, if you ask the converter to show you the price of “$31 million” in ETH, it will only select the “$31” part.

Here is how this looks:

In all fairness though, the feature is still a useful addition to anyone who is in the habit of converting fiat currencies to crypto in their heads – and will likely save them some time and clicks in the long run.

Opera has expressed willingness to tweak its browser in order to cater to cryptocurrency enthusiasts in the past.

Indeed, the company baked in protections against malicious netizens seeking to steal users’ CPU power to surreptitiously mine cryptocurrency.

Clarification: Opera has since reached out to clarify that the currency converter is automatically switched on by default, meaning that you only have to select your desired conversion rate.

It also mentioned that the tool should work with currency acronyms (like USD). From what we could see in our tests, this functionality seems to be a hit-or-miss though.