Zero knowledge
As most of our customers already know, the “rules” that we follow here at The Rock Trading Ltd to list a new currency are simple and straightforward:
- It should be interesting either from a technical or a financial point of view.
- Our users are interested in it.
- Market makers are willing to provide enough liquidity (and this, often, is crucial).
On the same day of its launch we added a new currency, ZCash (open for trading on the ZEC/BTC market). As of today, you probably already heard about it, since it made the headlines on pretty much any news outlet in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem — and mostly because when the first coins were traded on Poloniex their value skyrocketed up to 2000/3000 BTC for each ZCash. If it’s the first time that you’re reading about it, then you should know that Zcash is extremely interesting because it provides zero-knowledge transactions: the origin, the destination, and the amount are concealed to the public.
As any exchange, we hope that by adding new, interesting currencies we will attract more volume (even if it always goes to Poloniex, no matter what…). This time, however, we had a bigger, more important motivation: we strongly feel that privacy is an essential human right and one of the most important basis for freedom — and ZCash is focused exactly on preserving your privacy.
To further back our position, we implemented since the beginning the option to deposit and withdraw ZCash both through t-addresses and z-addresses.
Italy to ban zero knowledge currencies
While we were busy working on enabling ZCash deposits to The Rock Trading, 14 Italian MPs decided to lay down a bill proposal aimed at banning zero-knowledge cryptocurrencies.
If you didn’t already know, we have some strong ties with Italy, and our Italian subsidiary is part of Assobit (Italian Blockchain Association), along with Senator Quintarelli — the MP that led the mentioned ban-proposal: we can only feel ashamed by this.
Sidenote: we will stand our ground and proudly offer the option of depositing to z-addresses in the future — from now on, the so called “Quintarelli” option, as we want to honor the ban-proposal. No pun intended, obviously.
Fungibility and privacy in Bitcoin
ZCash is only one of the disruptive projects trying to safeguard privacy when using cryptocurrencies.
Unfortunately, Bitcoin is still lagging behind on this, but its first mover advantage is helping it to keep the highest-market-cap position. At the latest Scaling Bitcoin event in Milan we’ve heard a lot of talks about this, and the future looks bright.
I do believe that Bitcoin will add more privacy tools: they are really important for maintaining the currency’s fungibility, which is vital for any kind of currency. Until then, “experiments” like ZCash and other zero-knowledge cryptocurrencies are welcome, and we will always love to support them.
