Zcash is launched on Coinbase

By supporting the cryptocurrency, Coinbase will enable users to buy, sell, send, receive, or store ZEC throughout the company’s platforms and services. Zcash support is currently available to customers in most jurisdictions, but New York state and the UK.

The company explained how the privacy-focused capabilities of Zcash will be supported on Coinbase, revealing that it would offer partial support for shielded transactions until local regulations allow for full implementation of transaction shielding.

In a statement, Coinbase argues that the unencrypted, transparent version of the protocol allows third parties to see metadata associated with the communication or transaction, whereas the encrypted, shielded version protects this information. Initially, customers can send ZEC to Coinbase from both transparent and shielded addresses, but only send off Coinbase to transparent addresses.