Korbit, Korea’s largest Bitcoin exchange has announced the launch of Ethereum Classic trading, which enables Korbit users to purchase and sell ETC for KRW, without any fees.

On July 18, the Korbit development team officially announced their decision to halt Ethereum trading - including ETH deposits and withdrawals - to prevent users from being affected by the hard fork.

First major Bitcoin exchange in Korea to support Ethereum Classic

The Korbit team told its users that the exchange will resume Ethereum trading once the network settles and becomes more stable.

The Korbit team said in an email to its customers:

“To prepare for the hard fork, all ETH deposits and withdrawals will be disabled at 5pm KST on Wednesday, July 20th or one hour before the hard fork, whichever is earlier. Once the network is stable after the hard fork, we will re-enable all ETH deposits and withdrawals.”

However, the hard fork led to the creation of Ethereum Classic, a network devoted to the development and maintenance of the Ethereum network’s original chain. With the market cap and trading volume of ETC increasing due to the support of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges including Poloniex and Kraken, the Korbit team came to a decision to become the first major Bitcoin exchange in Korea to support Ethereum Classic.

All ETC trades will be free of cost

More importantly, as a celebration of their new trading feature, the Korbit team announced that all ETC trades will be free of cost, eliminating exchange and conversion fees for all users for a while.

The Korbit team said:

“Korbit’s Ethereum Classic-Korean Won (ETC-KRW) Exchange has finally launched. Now, you can directly trade ETC with KRW on Korbit Exchange. Similar to our BTC-KRW Exchange, you can trade ETC by setting your own price in a full order book and deposit ETC via our website to trade ETC. To celebrate its opening, you can trade ETC without fees for a while.”

Korbit, one of the two venture capital-backed Bitcoin exchanges in Korea, currently controls the majority of the market share in the Korean cryptocurrency market, with exceptionally high daily volumes and orders.

With their full support towards Ethereum Classic, other major Korean exchanges are highly likely to launch Ethereum Classic trading in the near future.