In an announcement on their blog, Kraken reports that they will launch trading for QTUM and ADA on their exchange. Trading will launch today (September 28, 2018) at 1:00 PM UTC.

Both QTUM and ADA will have trading pairs with: USD, EUR, CAD, XBT, and ETH.

This launch of fiat pairs will allow further growth for QTUM and ADA. Both of these crypto-assets have fiat pairs on UpBit and BitThumb, but those markets only support trading against the South Korean Won (KRW).

USD trading for QTUM is available on Bitfinex, and ADA has a USD market on Bittrex, but expanding to Kraken will allow more users to buy these crypto-assets with USD.

Kraken is one of the few exchanges that supports margin trading for altcoins. Margin trading allows users to borrow money from the exchangein order to trade long and short with leverage.

Despite supporting margin trading for BTC, ETH, XMR, and others, Kraken said that ADA & QTUM “margin trading will not be available at launch…but maybe enabled in the future.”

About Kraken

Kraken is the 22nd crypto-asset exchange by daily trading volume. Over the past 24 hours, they’ve traded 25,187 BTC, which represents 0.78% of all crypto-asset trading volume. For comparison, Kraken competitor Bitfinex recorded 101,249 BTC 24-hour trading volume, which is four times that of Kraken.

Kraken was launched in September 2013, when Kraken founder Jesse Powell saw issues with how the (now defunct) Mt. Gox was being run. .

Kraken has since been on the cutting edge of the exchange landscape. They were the first exchange to adopt the ISO 4217 currency code for Bitcoin (XBT), and they were also the first crypto-asset exchange on the Bloomberg Terminal (as of April 2014).

Kraken is one of the few exchanges that feature margin trading for altcoins, which gives users the ability to hedge their holdings with short positions.

By listing QTUM and ADA, Kraken adds to their laundry list of altcoin markets, which currently includes: ETH, XRP, BCH, LTC, XLM, XMR, ETC, DASH, ZEC, EOS, DOGE, and more.

About Cardano (ADA)

Cardano was created in by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum. ADA uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism called Ouroboros, which has received academic peer review from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Hailed by some as, “The Next NEO,” Cardano started after a $63M ICO in 2015.

ADA is ranked the number 9 currency on CoinMarketCap according to market cap. Its price is $0.082, giving it a market cap of $2.1B. With an all-time-high price is $1.33, ADA has fallen 94% since its peak.

About Quantum (QTUM)

QTUM is a proof-of-stake smart contract platform that allows developers to write code in different coding languages, including Python, Go, Lua, C++, and Rust. QTUM’s unique design is a combination of Ethereum and Bitcoin, allowing Ethereum smart contracts to be run on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Launched in 2017, QTUM was funded by a $15M sold-out ICO. It currently has  a price of $3.85 and a market cap of $342M.

QTUM’s price had previously gone all the way up to $106.88, which means it’s down 96% from it’s all-time-high. QTUM is up 5.5% over the past 24 hours.