South African cryptocurrency traders can now purchase Ethereum using Rands directly on the Luno exchange at launch fees of between 0% and 0.2%.

Marius Reitz, Luno's GM: Africa, said a direct Ethereum/Rand pair will make it "quicker, simpler and cheaper" for customers to interact with- and use Ethereum on the exchange.

"We are working on a number of enhancements to our platform and this pairing has been introduced in response to demand from our customers. Previously, customers could buy Ethereum through our instant buy option but having this ability directly on the exchange makes it faster and cheaper for traders," he says.

According to Luno, there are several use cases for Ethereum aimed at automating daily processes and removing the middlemen from the systems including those within legal and finance, and medical sectors, among others .

The cryptocurrency company describes Ethereum as a public, peer-to-peer network or blockchain.

"Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and its practical applications are vast in comparison to others. Where Bitcoin stores a list of balances and transactions on its blockchain, Ethereum is designed to store different types of data.

"This data can be used by computers running on the Ethereum blockchain. These programs are called decentralised apps, or dApps. Another significant difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that the supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million. Ethereum is not capped to any specific quantity," Luno states.

The company adds that developers can build and run decentralised applications on the Ethereum blockchain.

The purpose of these is to improve finance, personal information storage, governance and other industries by using the transparent nature of blockchain, it says.

"We have a dedicated Ethereum series on our learning portal as part of our commitment to encouraging responsible investing," says Reitz.

Luno supports Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to Reitz, there are over 2000 cryptocurrencies, but many of these are scams.

"So customers need to trust that the exchange they use has verified the track records of cryptocurrencies available on their platforms. Luno limits the currencies on offer to those on which we have completed extensive research and due diligence and we are satisfied with their credibility in terms of security and adoption. Luno will be adding additional cryptocurrencies to its platform later this year," he explains.

The cryptocurrency company claims to have over 2,7 million customers (wallets) spanning 40 countries.