Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif has added another digital currency ‘XEM’ into its trading platform with the inclusion of the XEM/JPY currency pair. The XEM/BTC pair will follow in the next two weeks.

The value of XEM, the cryptocurrency of the NEM blockchain platform, has skyrocketed in the last two weeks. It is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization ($98.81 million at press time).

NEM is a 2.0 blockchain platform with some unique features such as the NEM Mosaics and the multi-signature. The NEM Mosaics are unique tokens or assets that can be created by an entity to be used for its application, e.g., game points or an asset to represent a currency or even another cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.

The NEM blockchain technology has a huge following in Japan. Zaif CEO Takao Asayama has been the official spokesperson for NEM in Japan over the last few months and has been officially assigned as Director, NEM Japan.

Tech Bureau Corp., the parent company of the Zaif Exchange, developed a private blockchain solution – Mijin – that uses the NEM blockchain technology. Its next release, Catapult, a private blockchain solution, will see a substantial improvement in performance and throughput compared to Mijin. When completed, Catapult will be contributed to the NEM open source project, as well as deploying it into the NEM public blockchain.

“The project to fusion Tech Bureau and NEM into one big community is a continuing challenge for us all. However, NEM has grown its market cap by 5,000% in last 6 months since Tech Bureau started working on mijin with the 3 NEM core developers. I am proud to say that number is one of the indicators which symbolizes our success”, Asayama said. “Now I am responsible for the Japan chapter as a director and excited to see that NEM has already started making a certain volume of buzz here. I am excited to launch the new common Catapult core this summer.”

Currently, the Zaif exchange trades only Bitcoin and Monacoin. With the inclusion of XEM, it is poised to take the position as a premier exchange in Japan, especially given that the NEM project is well received in the country. Also, Zaif will also offer support for auto-reserve service which will be ready in about a month. Customers in Japan can buy XEM automatically using the dollar cost averaging method.