In a two-year-old gaming app fraud case, the top Indian financial crime investigating agency has frozen 85.9 bitcoins, equivalent to $1.6 million, held in an account on Binance. Separately, it also froze WRX, the native coin of WazirX, and USDT together, worth nearly $550,000. Earlier this month, the agency raided several premises in Kolkata in...Read More
The Twitter account of Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX remained compromised for hours on Tuesday. Hackers posted a fake XRP giveaway scheme through the exploited Twitter handle @CoinDCX to the exchange’s over 230,000 followers. The giveaway message was interspersed with a phishing link. CoinDCX Twitter Account Exploited As CoinDCX tried to take control of its compromised...Read More
On September 19, WazirX, one of India’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, announced the delisting of Circle’s USDC, Paxos’ USDP, and TrueUSD (TUSD) stablecoins, effective September 26, following in Binance’s footsteps. According to the statement, USDC, USDP, and TUSD deposits have already been suspended. In addition, users will have to withdraw their funds by October 05, or...Read More
A Bloomberg report on Wednesday claimed that Binance app downloads in India jumped to 429,000 in August, the highest this year. This comes just months after the country implemented stringent taxation on local exchanges. Binance’s India Gains Binance is the only one among the major exchanges whose app downloads had seen an increase in August...Read More
CoinSwitch Kuber’s CEO Ashish Singhal on Saturday provided more details about the searches at his office and residence by India’s financial crime investigating agency the directorate of enforcement (ED), two days ago. He refuted the recent allegations that his firm has been investigated for certain illicit activities. CoinSwitch CEO Explains In a Twitter thread, Singhal...Read More
Early this week, KuCoin released a survey regarding the new developments in India’s blockchain and crypto space – Into The Cryptoverse Report India, which revealed the number of crypto investors in the country to be in the range of 115 million as of June 2022. These people have either traded or held crypto assets in...Read More
India’s Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on Thursday conducted searches at the offices and residences of CoinSwitch Kuber as well as its CEO and directors. The financial crime investigating agency is reportedly investigating a possible violation of the Foreign Exchange Maintenance Act (FEMA). The searches were carried out after the ED officials found that the top...Read More
A group of leading Indian blockchain influencers with expertise in trading, NFT, Metaverse, cybercrime, etc., recently announced the formation of the India Blockchain Forum (IBF). The event at Hyderabad in India’s Telangana state was attended by the state government’s principal secretary for industry, commerce, and information technology, Jayesh Ranjan, said media reports. Hyderabad is India’s...Read More
India’s Enforcement Directorate is conducting an investigation against ten cryptocurrency exchanges allegedly involved in laundering more than 1 billion rupees, equivalent to more than $125 million in digital currency. According to The Economics Times, the exchanges (which have not yet been identified) were used by several companies accused of money laundering to make cryptocurrency purchases...Read More
After the unanticipated public spat between Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty on Saturday over the ownership of WazirX, most Indian business news platforms prominently provided a follow-up on the issue on Monday. Money Control carried an article based on an interview with Shetty in which he said legal documents are in...Read More
While many top-tier crypto exchanges have given up on India given the regulatory uncertainty and bear market, KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu is bullish on the local market for the long run. In a recent interview, he talked about “a welcoming market” and the availability of “expertise” as the two key reasons for his optimism for...Read More
On July 19, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a speech at the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s bicameral Parliament, that crypto is a danger to international regulatory arbitrage and that they should be blocked or banned. Sitharam explained that any attempt to regulate or ban crypto should be global because cryptocurrencies...Read More
In the wake of major Indian exchanges witnessing drastic drops in trading volume since the 30% tax on obtained revenues came into effect on April 1, the industry now encounters additional downward pressure following the introduction of another new tax that kicked in last Friday. Trading volume on large platforms has been down roughly 95%...Read More
In India, the downturn in the crypto market and the government’s overly restrictive control over the industry have caused many exchanges to suffer, not only because of a decline in adoption but from regulatory uncertainty. Meanwhile, the “anti-crypto” Reserve Bank of India (RBI) continues to work on its pilot project to introduce blockchain technology into...Read More
India’s largest crypto exchange by value – CoinDCX – has extended the withdrawal restrictions that have been in place since May 13 until further notice. It said these extreme steps are necessary to implement enhanced compliance and risk frameworks. After many investors took to social media to express their frustration over the pausing of withdrawals at...Read More
Indian investors may have lost $128 million (INR 1,000 crore) to fake crypto exchanges. Most of them were cheated due to a lack of knowledge about safe investments in digital assets. As investors increasingly shift their attention to crypto, scammers are also focusing on this new asset class to find their preys, said a news...Read More
The extreme pullback in the cryptocurrency market in the past few months has forced Coinbase, Bybit, and CryptoCom to reduce headcount. Now Indian trading platform Vauld has joined the league and announced a hefty 30% lay-off, which counts Pantera and Coinbase, among others, as investors. Vauld Lay-off According to a corporate communication available on its website,...Read More
India’s biggest crypto fraud to date continues to throw up new details, extending the size and scope of the scam even four years after the case first came to light. Earlier, the police estimated that the GainBitcoin scam involved about 80,000 BTC, but now they suspect the number to be anywhere between 385,000 to 600,000,...Read More
The Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council (BACC) has asked the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to restore the UPI service to Indian crypto exchanges. In a letter, it requested a meeting with the inter-bank retail payments and settlements body to discuss and understand its concerns around the crypto trade, media reports said. “We asked for...Read More
India’s central bank is constantly engaged with the government on cryptocurrencies, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor said on Wednesday. “I can say that on all issues there is constant engagement between the government and the Reserve Bank, including the cryptocurrency issues. We have given our views to the government. Let’s wait for the...Read More
The crash of Luna and TerraUSDT and the launch of Luna 2.0 have unleashed a wave of taxation issues for investors in India. While the Terraform Labs team has worked out a recovery plan and launched Luna 2.0 to compensate for the losses, concerns are piling up. Gift Tax on Luna 2.0 Airdrop In a...Read More
The Indian government is planning to issue a set of guidelines before July 1 after making some amendments to the scope and definition of VDAs for effective tax administration of virtual digital assets (VDA). The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has been asked to prepare the guidelines, media reports said. “This is an evolving...Read More
Betting on India’s impending launch of CBDC, T Rabi Sankar, Deputy Governor of the nation’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), dismissed the idea that stablecoins should be accepted as 1-to-1 fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies. CBDCs Can Kill Crypto “We believe that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could actually be able to kill whatever little...Read More
The a16z-backed Indian crypto exchange – CoinSwitch Kuber – announced the launch of an index that tracks the performance of crypto assets based on the Indian rupee rather than the US dollar. CoinSwitch CEO Kuber Ashish Singhal tweeted the latest updates regarding the newly unveiled index, the Crypto Rupee Index (CRE8). He stated that it...Read More
India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has said that it would implement its CBDC plans through a graded approach and as per the country’s monetary policy. The introduction of CBDC, scheduled for the current 2022-23 fiscal, will be in sync with the financial stability and currency and payments systems, media reports said,...Read More
After months of consultation with domestic as well as foreign stakeholders and organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, India is in the last stages of finalizing a consultation paper on cryptocurrencies. According to the economic affairs secretary Ajay Seth, the government is “fairly ready.” India’s Consultation Paper on Cryptocurrencies While addressing reporters on...Read More
A recent study conducted by Finder estimated that 34% of the Indian respondents had played a play-to-earn (P2E) game. Hong Kong (29%) ranked second, while the UAE held the third position with 27%. India Leads the Way in the P2E Universe Finder’s NFT Gaming Adoption Report determined that play-to-earn games have become a highly popular...Read More
India’s banking sector regulator used the market crash to support his argument that crypto has no underlying value and justify his stance that it can be a threat to financial stability. RBI Justifies Not Regulating Crypto Reminding his often repeated caution to the people, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said that had...Read More
India’s regulatory uncertainty for the crypto sector came into sharp focus at the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos. In an interview with Reuters, CoinSwitch Kuber CEO Ashish Singhal highlighted the government’s policy dilemma on the industry. “Users don’t know what will happen with their holdings – is the government going to...Read More
The call for reducing Tax Deduction at Source (TDS) on crypto transactions is intensifying among the crypto ecosystem players in India. A TDS of 1% on virtual digital assets has been approved by the Union budget 2022-23. Terming this too high as it can drive traders away from the market and hurt volumes, industry representatives...Read More
