India has been facing various issues with the new technology ever since crypto emerged a few years back. The Indian government has not majorly accepted crypto-world and has been making decisions against the same so far. Finance minister Arun Jaitley made a statement that “The government does not recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payments system,” early in 2018. Due to this decision, digital currency suffered a lack of interest in the Indian economy. But as the time passed away, Indian citizens tried to indulge in this system and started to invest time and assets into the new technology. But after sometime on April 6, Reserve Bank of India banned banks and financial institutions under its control from providing services to crypto businesses which came to be a huge shock to Indian crypto institutions.
One of the most affected institutions was ZebPay who decided to shut down the exchange due to harsh laws and low scope of cryptocurrency in India. With more than 3 million users in the company and an annual turnover of 500 crores in just 2 years, the interest was being well reflected in Indian economy. This Ahmedabad based company attracted more than 3-4 lack users every month. With this huge attraction and being one of the most famous and oldest crypto exchanges in India, the company had a great reputation in its sector. Even though the company has made a decision to give up but it made gave a huge relief by not discontinuing its e-wallet. The company admitted that “The curb on bank accounts has crippled our & our customer’s, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business. As a result, we are stopping our exchange activities."
Other Indian crypto giants are also being affected including Unocoin, WazirX, and Koinex. India has more than 5 million users from its 10 crypto exchanges bringing a business of 1.5 billion each month. Other companies such as Bitsbns have been coming up to help users of Zebpay by making it possible to migrate funds in their company. If the government implies these harsh policies time to time then it may be difficult for this technology to survive. Indian crypto supporters such as Nischal Shetty ( CEO of WazirX) gives motivation to current crypto users by convincing them to keep crypto burning in India. Hopefully in coming weeks or months, we can see situations much improving in India and Government may take positive steps towards Cryptos.
