Crypto Breakthrough: New York State Approves Privacy Coin Trading

A recent regulatory boost from the state of New York is bringing privacy coins back in the spotlight.

The cryptocurrency trading platform Gemini is the first BitLicensed exchange that’s actively trading an anonymous cryptocurrency, now that the state’s Department of Financial Services has formally accepted the trading of Zcash. It’s a move that could have big implications for other privacy coins like Monero, Dash, PIVX and Verge.

“Regulatory certainty and oversight are critical for both fostering innovation and protecting consumers – and we’re excited to provide our customers with a safe, secure, and regulated platform to buy, sell, and store Zcash,” says Gemini VP of Engineering Eric Winer. “The Zcash protocol’s cutting edge use of zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (‘zk-SNARKS’ or ‘zero-knowledge proofs’) makes it a truly innovative privacy coin that offers confidentiality for peer-to-peer transactions similar to those afforded to fiat currency transfers (e.g., ACH, FedWire, SWIFT, et cetera).”

The Department of Financial Services released a statement of its own, detailing how the Zcash blockchain works.

“The Zcash network supports two kinds of transactions, transparent and shielded. Transparent transactions operate similarly to Bitcoin in that the balance and the amounts of the transaction are publicly visible on the blockchain.

Shielded transactions utilize z-addresses and are entirely private. Transactions associated with z-addresses do not appear on the public blockchain. Zcash is the digital cryptography-based asset of the Zcash network, similar to how bitcoin is the digital cryptography-based asset of the Bitcoin network.”

Gemini has also earned approval to list Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC), but those coins have not yet debuted on the platform.

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