Bitcoin Korean Exchange Bithumb Adds Zcash Cryptocurrency

Bithumb, one of the world’s biggest exchanges for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, added support for a new cryptocurrency on Tuesday.

Based in South Korea, Bithumb listed Zcash, a privacy-centric digital money based on a blockchain, a public accounting ledger that tracks virtual currencies, allowing people to buy and sell them without the need of a middle-man like a bank. Zcash is similar to Bitcoin and Ether, the most popular cryptocurrencies, in that it consists of a network distributed across a global swarm of volunteer machines, except it affords greater anonymity to transactions. (For a primer on Zcash, read this.)

Bithumb’s addition of Zcash comes a day after CEX.io, another cryptocurrency exchange based in England, added support for the cryptocurrency.

South Korea has become a hotbed for cryptocurrency activity, despite a recent crackdown on “initial coin offerings” or ICOs, a financial mechanism that allows entrepreneurs to mint their own virtual coin-like token and sell them through crowdsales. China recently banned ICOs, while the U.S. has taken a more tailored approach, where SEC regulators have called out particular scams.

Bithumb now lists nine different cryptocurrencies for people to trade: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, and Zcash. Lim noted that the number transactions related to Monero, which Bithumb listed in August, and Zcash are growing rapidly.