On July 26, India’s Jio Financial Services (JFS) and American asset management giant BlackRock announced a joint venture to launch digital asset management services in the world’s second most populated nation. Jio Financial Services comes under the umbrella of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group. The pair target an initial investment of $150 million each, according...Read More
The venture capital fund Hashed Emergent will host a multi-chain Web3 conference in Bangalore, India, at the beginning of December this year. The event, dubbed “India Blockchain Week (IBW),” will touch upon the country’s increasing role in the cryptocurrency industry. Indians have shown interest in digital assets lately (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic), whereas some...Read More
A new proposal is about to the submitted to the Indian State government to restore the use of the country’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for crypto exchanges operating in India, on top of two previous proposals. The latest development comes after the supervising body for the real-time interbank payments network claimed in 2022 that it...Read More
A 49-year-old resident of Kolkata, India, reportedly drowned in the Hooghly River. The primary autopsy found no evidence of violence, suggesting he committed suicide. The man supposedly invested in shares and bitcoin, hinting that a potential loss on his investment could be one reason behind his unnatural death. Another Indian Jumping off a Bridge A...Read More
The US-based cryptocurrency exchange – Gemini – announced plans to establish a new engineering hub in Gurgaon, India. This will be the company’s second Asian location, as previously it opened an office in Singapore. The expansion outside the US coincides with the regulatory uncertainty in the States. The CEO of Coinbase – Brian Armstrong –...Read More
A 23-year-old professional with a major tech company who lost nearly Rs. 30 lakh (approx. $37,500) in the cryptocurrency market tried to commit suicide by jumping off a river bridge in Kolkata, India. A cab driver who noticed the young man on the Vidyasagar Setu (bridge) alerted the nearby police about his intentions. Borrowed to...Read More
Indian tax authorities collected Rs 158 crore (approx. $19 million) in TDS on the transfer of virtual digital assets (VDA) till March 20, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary told the Parliament on Tuesday. Given that the financial year ended on March 31, it can be taken as the final figure for the entire...Read More
A 60-year-old Indian woman lost nearly $30,000 in a crypto investment scam after she was approached on the matrimonial site where she had registered herself to look for a life partner. The con man told her that he was a US-based engineer and can make her earn quick profits through bitcoin investments. Investment in Love...Read More
According to a recent Statista report, India’s crypto community could surge to more than 156 million members by the end of the year. Most people expected to jump on the bandwagon are educated younger individuals with middle-income status who seek alternatives to the shaking banking system. Indians Could Flock to Crypto in the Near Future...Read More
The Twitter account of one of the leading news channels in India – News24 – became a victim of a recent cryptocurrency scheme. Hackers breached their security to post phishing links of a fake XRP drop, urging people to click and potentially get conned. Crypto scammers have previously compromised the Twitter account of India’s Prime...Read More
A second-year B.Com student from the Indian city Lucknow reportedly hanged himself after losing a bitcoin investment worth ₹3.5 lahks ($4,200). The local police assured they will investigate the tragic event once the victim’s family filed a complaint. Depression and Then Suicide According to coverage by Hindustan Times, the boy distributed the sum through an online...Read More
Indian crypto exchange WazirX has wound up its NFT marketplace operations with immediate effect. Currently, the WazirX NFT site displays a message to this effect. WazirX NFT Sunsetted “The WazirX NFT marketplace has been sunsetted. You can still trade your NFTs on OpenSea,” the message reads. In a statement on its site, Wazir said despite creating a...Read More
The first Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting of G20 under India’s presidency, taking place from February 23 to 25 at Bengaluru, is expected to discuss cryptocurrencies, among other issues, Reuters said in a report. Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who plays the host, earlier said that the group is exploring if it can...Read More
India’s retail CBDC pilot, launched on December 1, has onboarded 50,000 users and 5,000 merchants. In the two-month period, 0.77 million e-rupee transactions were carried out, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said. Right now, digital rupee (e-rupee) transactions are available in a closed group of banks, cities, and merchants. India CBDC Plan will Go...Read More
The opaque and intriguing ownership of the Indian crypto exchange WazirX continues to baffle investors and crypto honchos alike. Over the past two weeks, Binance and WazirX top executives once again came to blows over the issue. In August 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhoa and WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty publicly accused each other of lying about...Read More
The world’s leading crypto exchange has given an ultimatum to the operator of WazirX to withdraw all customer funds stored on Binance’s infrastructure and wallets. This comes as Zanmai has supposedly refused to retract a previous “false public statement” against Binance. The spat between the two crypto trading platforms began last year when the Indian...Read More
Months of lobbying by Indian and global crypto firms to see if the local tax laws will provide some leeway proved futile. The Indian Finance Minister, in her budget speech for the 2023-24 fiscal, did not mention crypto or virtual assets at all. No relief in existing crypto taxes has been granted. Crypto Taxes Unchanged ...Read More
In a significant development that indicates that the Indian government may not fully chime with the central bank’s overly hostile stance against cryptocurrencies, a junior minister explained that such activities are fine as long as they follow existing laws. This is in sharp contrast to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) ban on crypto in...Read More
While Indian crypto exchanges lost a significant portion of their trading volume after new taxes for the sector came into force, the losses, so far, were referred to in percentage terms, with most estimates quoting them to be above 90%, compared to the previous year. Now, a new study has quantified the value of cumulative...Read More
A junior finance minister told the Indian parliament on Tuesday that the government has collected about $7.4 million in TDS on crypto transfers since July 1. Given the low numbers, the government may consider the local crypto industry’s demand to reduce the tax to a reasonable level – in the range of 0.01% to 0.05%....Read More
A prominent Indian cryptocurrency trade body – Bharat Web3 Association (BWA) – has red-flagged the high taxes and regulatory uncertainty in its draft of concerns and recommendations submitted to the Indian Finance Ministry, which is holding consultations in the run-up to the budget for 2023-24. A meeting between the BWA representatives and the Indian finance...Read More
The initial excitement among Indian bankers over the launch of a central bank-sponsored digital rupee seems to be fizzling out. They find it adding to their paper and accounting work without bringing any significant benefits over the existing procedures. Bankers point out that the real benefit of e-rupee may be in the retail and consumer...Read More
India’s largest and most advanced government-run hospital, more popularly known by its acronym AIIMS (The All India Institute of Medical Sciences), suffered a hack of its servers on November 23. Even as they remained out of order for the sixth consecutive day, a new twist emerged in the ongoing multi-agency investigation and restoration effort. A...Read More
The quick downfall of FTX with an $8-10 billion deficit in its balance sheet has left the broader cryptocurrency market reeling under its cascading effects. Besides Proof of Reserves (PoR) and Reserves to Liability (R2L) Ratio data, Indian crypto exchanges, battling low volume caused by high taxation and an unfriendly regulatory environment, have responded to...Read More
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has all but given up on India. Pointing out the 1% transaction tax that came into force on 1 July 2022, CZ said it makes crypto trading unviable in India. Speaking at the TechCrunch Session: Crypto 2022 on November 17 in Miami, CZ further pointed out that Binance is engaged...Read More
India’s anti-crypto policy came into sharp focus at the prestigious Singapore Fintech Festival (2-4 November), where Binance CEO flagged high tax rates as undoing the fledgling crypto business in the country. With over 60,000 participants and 850 speakers representing top global financial services, banks, and policymaking bodies, Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) is one of the...Read More
Indian investigation agencies are probing three crypto exchanges for their roles in illegal drug trade transactions after they were alerted by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), which has zeroed in on nearly 200 such transactions. These financial dealings for suspected drug deals in Nigeria, the Cayman Islands, and the British Virgin Islands were reportedly carried...Read More
A series of enabling factors places India at the forefront of global Web3 transformation, said a report by Nasscom, a no-profit apex body of the $227-billion Indian tech industry. It identifies the rapid adoption of new technologies, vast talent pool, and robust startup ecosystem as the key drivers of the nation’s push for a key...Read More
A day after Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke about her plans to work towards a tech-driven regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies under the aegis of G20, industry leaders offered mixed reactions to her statements. Sitharaman spoke about crypto regulations to reporters on the sidelines of the fall meetings at IMF, World Bank, and G20...Read More
An Indian district, Firozabad, about 40 km from Agra of Taj Mahal’s fame in the Indian province of Uttar Pradesh, would start the registration of complaints police complaints on the blockchain network. The district, with 2.4 million people and 21 police stations, aims to achieve immutability and transparency of complaints lodged by victims of crime...Read More
