India has never been kind to cryptocurrencies, yet global investors have made huge bets on the country’s digital coin ecosystem. In Novemb...
India has never been kind to cryptocurrencies, yet global investors have made huge bets on the country’s digital coin ecosystem.
In November 2019, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volumes, acquired WazirX, an Indian exchange, and last year, another Indian exchange, CoinDCX, secured financing from Seychelles-based BitMEX and San Francisco-based giant Coinbase.
These investments happened despite the fact that for around two years starting April 2018, financial institutions in India were restricted from providing services to crypto exchanges and their customers due to a Reserve Bank of India order. This ban forced at least two crypto exchanges to shutter. And even now, crypto exchanges in India are functioning without the services of banks.
But experts believe such investments are likely to continue coming into India.
“There is an increasing trend of foreign cryptocurrency exchanges investing in Indian cryptocurrency exchanges. It is because India has a population of 139 crore that is predominantly young which is seen as tech-savvy and more adaptable to crypto saving,” said Harish BV, co-Founder, Unocoin, which has a userbase of 13 lakh in India. The median age of Indians is between 28 and 29 years.
Policy flip-flop
In 2018, India’s then-finance minister Arun Jaitley had dealt a death blow to the future of cryptocurrencies in the country. “The government does not recognise cryptocurrency as...
