Coinbase Welcomes Zcash to Its Crypto Family

According to the official announcement, Coinbase, the US exchange and wallet provider giant is opening up the new service to a number of jurisdictions. Residents of New York and the UK are excluded from the starting list of locations. Zcash’s team stated that additional jurisdictions would be added at a later stage.

The introduction of Zcash to all of Coinbase’s connected apps comes after the digital currency was added to the platform of Coinbase pro a few weeks ago. It has been stated that ZEC to USD trade will be available only after reaching sufficient liquidity.

Thanks to the latest cryptography advances that are implemented in Zcash’s network, it ensures transaction privacy for its users.  Zcash offers “transparent” and “shielded” transactions. The transparent, or unencrypted version of the protocol provides third parties with the opportunity to see the metadata that is associated with the particular transaction/communication. The shielded, or encrypted version protects such sensitive information from third parties.

Coinbase has planned accordingly and has deployed specific cryptography features to maintain security. The team behind the exchange states that initially its customers will be able to send ZEC to Coinbase from both transparent and shielded addresses, but they will be able to send assets to transparent addresses only. At a later stage, the team will investigate and work on the option to send ZEC to shielded addresses which are located in areas where it complies with local laws.

As of now, Zcash has not issued a response to the announcement, but there has been a visible drop in trading prices, with the coin trading at around $66 on December 5th compared to almost $78 on December 4th. The data comes from CoinMarketCap’s daily trading chart for Zcash.

Coinbase’s decision comes as an answer to its customer's wishes to be able to buy and sell a rich range of assets on the platform. Furthermore, since September Coinbase has been operating its new listing assets process which aims to enrich the digital assets portfolio.