Asian exchanges support Ethereum trading

Shortly after the release of Ethereum’s production software, digital currency exchanges are offering support for local tokens of the blockchain and the ether cryptocurrency.

In recent weeks, most of the announcements have come from Asia, with exchanges in China, Japan, and South Korea all offering support for ETH trading. Such a move came following news that Bitfinex, one of the world’s largest digital currency exchanges, had added support for the digital currency on March 12.

Regional exchanges have since announced support for ETH trading, including Coincheck, CHBTC, Korbit, and Quoine, and have raised more than $5 million in joint venture capital funds.

Quoine CEO Mario Gomez Lozada reported that the Singapore-based exchange has seen an influx of ether trading activity, telling CoinDesk:

“We did a few thousand ether trades on the launch day, mostly from Japanese traders, and we hit 1,000 bitcoin trades shortly after that. Our Japanese traders adopted ether very quickly.”

Interest in ether has been growing after the cryptocurrency’s market cap rose to $1 billion this month. As of press time, the market share has decreased, and after a period of fluctuation in value, it is now around $937 million.

At press time, Ether is valued at less than $12 on exchanges, a figure influenced by traders’ interest in the digital currency.

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Exchange representatives expressed their love for Ethereum and their hope that it will help expand the digital currency market and make headway with the use cases that Bitcoin startups are looking for.

Kagayaki Kawabata, CoinDesk’s business development lead, told CoinDesk:

“Bitcoin is about money. We want Ethereum to be everything, not just money. So it’s natural that we support Ether.”

CoinDesk has therefore added support for ether trading, allowing traders to borrow ether to make more than five trades.

Kawabata said interest in Ethereum is low right now, but he suggested that collaborative interest from regional peers could help raise awareness.

Furthermore, Gomez Lozada said he believes Ethereum will attract new traders to his exchange and foster their interest in digital currencies and blockchain technology.

He said:

“We’ve already seen new traders join the platform just trading ETH.”

So far, not all exchanges in all regions are ready to accept Ethereum. Huobi spokesperson Xu Qing said they are interested in technology development, but have no plans to accept Ether at this time.

Qing said:

“We are still looking at ‘outstanding’ digital currencies. Any new digital currency needs time to adapt to market volatility, and it also takes time to accept the issuance mechanism and market liquidity.”