“Craziness everywhere, don't know where this is headed”
Nischal Shetty, founder of Indian crypto exchange WazirX, talks about the flux in the ecosystem, navigating minefields and the promise of regulation.
Why read this story?
Editor's note: Crypto is on a high in India. Crypto is in limbo in India. At the moment, both are true. Beginning in March last year, local cryptocurrency exchanges were elated when the Supreme Court quashed the Reserve Bank of India’s ban on crypto transactions. The RBI’s April 2018 diktat had effectively made the exchanges persona non grata for Indian banks. Now, they could once again start accepting investor funds freely through payment gateways and banking channels. From there, life has only got better—for the most part. As the price of Bitcoin shot up from $8,000 in March to over $20,000 by December-end, so did user signups on the top Indian crypto exchanges. Social media campaigns and heavy advertising during the Indian Premier League have seen crypto become a hot topic even for novice investors. Daily trading volumes in India grew 6x to over $22 million by the end of 2020 from just $4.5 million at the start of March 2020, according to crypto data platform CoinGecko. In 2020, cryptocurrencies gained mainstream popularity with major banks and card networks, globally, creating products …
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