Global crypto players set to tap Indian market

Mumbai: A significant number of global crypto players have started making foray into the untapped Indian market of virtual currency. The trigger is the recent apex court's 'go-ahead' for the virtual currency in the country.

The Supreme Court overturned a ban imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on crypto currency payments on March 4. As a result, the global crypto players are preparing to tap into an opportunity potentially worth $12.9 billion.

While Bitcoin was the first crypto currency to see widespread distribution, the birth of the industry gave rise to other alternative coins like Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Monero, and more.

The growing popularity of the Crypto assets witnessed Bitcoin valuation to go over Rs 11 lakh country. The instability in the US market along with other factors has promoted a resurgence of interest and the value of Bitcoin has been rising towards 2017 levels when it peaked at approximately Rs 12.5 lakh for one Bitcoin. Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of Unocoin, a crypto currency exchange, says, "we have actually seen the all-time high of $20,000 in December 2017.

I think at that time the increase in price was more related to fear of missing out for the investors. But this time there is more genuine reasons for the price increase like American hedge funds adding crypto assets to their balance sheet, PayPal allowing access to its millions of customers to buy and sell cryptos followed by an announcement from DBS bank that they will soon start providing trading services for crypto to their clients."

US exchanges like Coinbase have over 1.5 crore users, which is close to five per cent of the population. In contrast, India has an estimated 50 lakh users at present. In fact, India is now one of the fastest growing crypto communities, with the number of wallets (accounts) growing by 18 per cent month-on-month.

At ZebPay alone, a crypto exchange active in the country, its active user base has multiplied by 3.8 times since March.

Taking a note of it and making the crypto currencies affordable, the crypto exchanges are currently working towards lowering their fees.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Vikram Rangala, Chief Marketing Officer, ZebPay, said, "We are restructuring so we can offer the lowest possible fees, lower than others, to make it affordable for everyone. This is the way for ordinary families to create wealth for the future using this new asset class."

Of late, Zebpay has launched Project Dazzle, which will offer India's first non-fungible crypto token (NFT).

In 2020, CoinDCX, crypto currency exchange and liquidity aggregator, saw record increases in user sign-ups (10x), and 47 per cent growth in trading volumes in Q1 alone and even during the lockdown the growth was consistent across month-on-month with Q3.

In Q3 we observed 3 x quarter-over-quarter growths in trading volume, and 4 x quarter-over-quarter growths in daily active users, says Sumit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of CoinDCX.