Bittrex Launches Fiat Markets for Cardano (ADA) and ZCash (ZEC)

Bittrex is expanding its fiat pairs with Cardano (ADA) and ZCash (ZEC). The exchange became compliant with carrying out fiat operations in March 2018, and is one of the few offering direct fiat deposits, with some limitations applying. With this move, Bittrex differentiates itself from the series of crypto-only exchanges. Bittrex also carries Tether (USDT), but fiat pairings offer extra liquidity, and a chance to buy into assets directly.

https://twitter.com/BittrexExchange/status/1037454308130922496

Bittrex allows fiat deposits from older accounts, in this case, those created before September 4. Because KYC restrictions apply for relatively low sums, the exchange will have to work and verify each account individually.

Bittrex also has different tiers of verification, one for trading, and one for deposits or withdrawals. In theory, trading against USD positions may be possible on Bittrex, even without the possibility to withdraw the funds. Users must have their bank account whitelisted before being able to withdraw funds.

USD trading is potentially a more secure alternative compared to USDT pairings. While the USDT has kept its dollar peg until now, there are still concerns a panic run could bring down the token’s value. However, in the case of the USD market, traders have access to fiat.

The announcement comes at a time when crypto market prices are sliding across the board, and fiat trading is dwindling to extremely low levels.

ADA prices lost a penny from $0.094 down to $0.084 in the past 24 hours, down about 11%. AS of 12:00 UTC on Thursday, ADA traded at $0.084653. More than 39% of ADA trading is against the USDT token, and Bittrex will offer the first fiat pair for the coin.

ZEC has a similar trading profile, with most of the activity concentrated on Binance, and more than 39% of trades against the USDT, based on data from CryptoCompare. ZEC is a relatively new digital asset, trading around $128.37 at the time of writing. Unlike ADA, ZEC has some fiat inflows from Korean Won trading.

Buying and selling directly with cash has been made difficult for crypto assets. Recently, services allowing anonymous trading like Shapeshift have started gathering basic user information and requiring accounts, while the Changelly service is enacting KYC processes for what the team considers suspicious trades.