Indian Bitcoin Exchange Zebpay Adds Litecoin Support

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On January 25, 2018, Zebpay, one of India’s most popular mobile-based cryptocurrency exchanges, announced the addition of Litecoin to its trading platform. In a blog post on its website, the company stated that the cryptocurrency is one of the several other tokens that are also scheduled to be added in the near future.

Litecoin, released in October 2011 by former Google employee, Charlie Lee, was introduced as a lighter alternative to bitcoin. It is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies currently on the market and has a market cap of close to $10 billion. In December 2017, Litecoin reached an all time high price of around $350.

Litecoin is the second cryptocurrency that has been added to Zebpay over the past few weeks. Earlier in January 2018, the company rolled out the ability for users to trade Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Users of Zebpay that held any amount of bitcoin prior to the Bitcoin Cash hard fork on August 1, 2017 were also given an equivalent amount of BCH once the cryptocurrency was added to the platform. Some customers, however, were able to withdraw their Bitcoin Cash balances to their external wallets as early as November 2017. On December 14, Zebpay withdrew the option of sending the forked cryptocurrency to other wallets in favor of crediting the balance to its own trading platform once released. The company held up its end of the bargain once Bitcoin Cash trading became available through its mobile app though.

Importantly, though, Zebpay does not offer cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency pairings on its trading platform`. Converting between different digital currencies requires the user to first ‘sell’ their holdings for fiat equivalent, making the entire process susceptible to market volatility.

According to Zebpay’s November newsletter, the company will also be introducing Ripple and Ethereum to its exchange. Based on the time interval between the addition of Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, it may only be a couple of months before all four digital currencies can be traded on the platform.

As of December 2017, Zebpay serves over 2 million users with that number expected to rise in the near future. Furthermore, the Zebpay mobile app has found great success on the Android and iOS marketplaces beating other finance applications owned by private sector banks in the country. It faces tough competition from other platform-agnostic exchanges, however, including the likes of Koinex and Coinsecure. The former supports other cryptocurrencies as well, including Golem, IOTA and OmiseGO.