Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Argentina Embraces Altcoins, Bitcoin Boosts Overstock Shares and Bitbond Funding

• Bitcoin Price: £315.68 (via CoinDesk.com)

The price of bitcoin has continued to slide, dropping in value by a further 5% over the last 24 hours. This takes its price down to $525 (£315), around $100 less than it was one month ago.

Bitcoin's misfortunes have been mirrored by most other major cryptocurrencies, with litecoin, peercoin and darkcoin all experiencing similar drops.

Bucking the trend, but in the opposite direction for a change, is dogecoin. The meme-inspired cryptocurrency saw its price rise by just over 3% since yesterday, taking its market capitalisation up above $13 million once more.

Argentina embraces altcoin

A new bitcoin brokerage service based in Argentina has been launched, allowing consumers to buy the cryptocurrency at more than 8,000 convenience stores.

Ripio, launched by bitcoin merchant processor BitPagos, aims to provide an easy method of acquiring bitcoins to underbanked consumers and existing bitcoin users.

"You can go to any location, give them your account in Ripio and the amount of pesos you want to get in bitcoins. Boom: You have some bitcoins," Sebastian Serrano, CEO of BitPagos, told CoinDesk.

"It's going to be extremely easy to use and to buy bitcoins easily, securely and near you, even if you don't have a bank account. We think that this is going to push adoption."

Bitcoin adds 4 cents to each Overstock shares

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has attributed the introduction of bitcoin infrastructure into the online retailer's payment structure to an expected rise of four cents per share.

Overstock began accepting bitcoin payments in January and has since made more than $2 million in sales through the cryptocurrency. That accounts for around 0.25% of total sales.

"I think the world expects us to make 75-80 cents per share this year. And four cents of that would be attributable to bitcoin," Byrne told Reuters.

"When technology comes along like cryptocurrency, which can replace at a far lower cost, I'm all for supporting it."

Bitcoin lending platform secures seed funding

Peer-to-peer bitcoin lending platform Bitbond has received €200,000 (£160,000) in a seed funding round led by VC Point Nine Capital.

The Berlin-based company provides individuals and small businesses a way to raise funds through cryptocurrency rather than traditional means.

CEO and co-founder Radoslav Albrecht said: "Our main target borrowers are small businesses that have been operating for two or three years, or maybe longer and cannot get finance from a bank, possibly because they simply don't have access to a bank account, or they are a type of business that the banks typically do not lend to."