India has had an interesting few months on the crypto front. Look at WazirX’s journey – the largest Indian crypto exchange went live just three weeks before the Reserve Bank of India issued its ban on crypto banking in 2018. Since then, WazirX went on to become the largest exchange platform for crypto traders based out of India.
While speaking at the latest Forkast podcast, Nischal Shetty CEO of WazirX elaborated on the current crypto environment in India. This interview comes a week after India’s Enforcement Directorate issued a show-cause notice to the cryptocurrency exchange WazirX over 27.9 billion rupees (US$382 million) related to cryptocurrency transactions. However, as per the tweet thread from WazirX, the company was yet to receive an official notification for the same.
On the very basic question if there was a banking ban in India? WazirX CEO said, “We don’t have a banking ban any more and our government is actively discussing regulations.”
He added:
“We’ve progressed a lot coming from no banking access for the industry to today having clarity that we can least access banking. There’s no law against it. This does not mean that the path is smooth or everything’s amazing on the ground. But I would say I still see this as progress.”
Addressing how cryptocurrencies have the potential to empower the unbanked sector in India, Shetty said:
“What can reach everyone is the internet and after the internet, it can be crypto. So the moment we have some sort of digital regulations around the whole digital asset ecosystem, you’ll see these 200 million onboarded to the digital India initiative.”
Read more: https://ambcrypto.com/indias-cbdc-plan-heres-the-how-when-and-why/