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
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) toughened up its stance against cryptocurrencies, citing the rising asset class as a threat to its sovereign interest and a negative impact on the banking system. The news came on the heels of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong blaming India’s central bank for denying the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) services...Read More
Indian regulators are making the rulebook tough for celebrity endorsement of crypto products. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has advised prominent public personalities, including celebrities and sportsmen, to refrain from endorsing anything related to the digital asset industry. SEBI’s stance is based on the logic that crypto products are not regulated in...Read More
Singapore-headquartered cricket NFT platform Rario has bagged $120 million in funding led by Dream Capital. The Series A funding round also saw the participation of Alpha Wave Global. Founded in 2011, Rario’s existing investors include Animoca Brands, Presight Capital, and Kingsway Capital. “We are pleased to announce that we have raised $120M Series A Funding...Read More
A news report suggesting that India’s hostile policy towards the digital asset sector is leading to an exodus of crypto-entrepreneurs from the country has said that Nischal Shetty and Siddharth Menon, both co-founders of WazirX, have left India along with their families for Dubai. Shetty and Menon are CEO and COO at WazirX, respectively. The...Read More
Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX announced on Tuesday a $135 million Series D funding round. The company’s valuation in the new round has nearly doubled to $2.15 billion from $1.1 billion in August 2021. Co-founder and CEO of the firm Sumit Gupta announced the news on Twitter, saying he was “excited to share that CoinDCX has...Read More
India’s financial crime investigation agency Enforcement Directorate (ED) has sought the help of police in a case of bitcoin theft worth Rs. 6 crores ($790,000) by the investigators who were assisting the police in a crypto fraud case worth over $260 million. What Is the Case? As per media reports, ED officials visited the office...Read More
Two of India’s largest crypto exchanges – CoinSwitch Kuber and WazirX – have halted deposits in Indian rupees citing regulatory problems, triggering a wave of angry protests by investors on social media. It comes two days after Coinbase halted deposits in Indian rupees on Sunday, barely 3 days following its launch in India on April...Read More
A series of cyberattacks breached multiple Twitter accounts associated with the administrative and legislative bodies of India in the past few days. NFT-related content that promoted a project called “Azuki” was posted on the compromised accounts, making people speculate that the hackers were conducted by the same individuals or entities. The most recent victim came...Read More
Three days after Coinbase launched trading services in India, claiming support for the popular payment instrument Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the firm disabled the function and virtually stopped offering users the option to buy on Sunday. The Coinbase app is, however, still allowing customers to sell through IMPS (Immediate Payment Service). Coinbase launched trading services...Read More
Since the new crypto tax came into effect on April 1, Indian digital asset exchanges have witnessed a sharp fall in transaction volumes. The final days of March also saw a panic selling. Crypto Transactions Plummet in India Sharing volume graphs of four leading crypto exchanges, CoinDCX, BITBNS, ZEBPay, and WazirX, on April 3, a...Read More
On March 28, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested a person, Abdul Gafoor, one of the accused in the Morris Coin fraud case that erupted on the India crypto scene in January 2022 and still remains one of the largest such frauds in the country. ED is the economic intelligence wing of the Ministry of Finance,...Read More
The second-most populated nation will reportedly implement a regulatory framework on cryptocurrencies only after a global consensus on the matter. According to a person familiar with the matter, the Indian government does not plan a law soon to either restrict or promote dealing with digital assets. Crypto Regulation Needs Global Approach India is among the...Read More
As declared by Union Budget 2022-23, Indian cryptocurrency investors will have to pay tax under the new scheme for Taxation of Virtual Digital Assets from April 1. However, the current tax regime is expected to trigger a mass exodus of talent from the country, which faces the risk of missing out on Web 3.0 innovation,...Read More
The evasion of Goods and Services Tax (GST) by crypto exchanges was figured in the Indian Parliament on March 28. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary informed that 11 such digital asset platforms were fined for tax evasion in 2021-22. Tax Evasion by Crypto Exchanges The total tax evasion by these companies amounted to Rs....Read More
The lack of knowledge among common investors about cryptocurrencies and how to safely invest in them is resulting in a growing number of frauds. In a recent example, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) of Ahmedabad Police in India’s Gujarat province registered a case where the victim was duped of Indian Rupees (Rs.) 22 lakh (approximately...Read More
