TL;DR Breakdown:
- Indian crypto exchanges saw massive growth in users after Bitcoin’s ATH.
- The exchange said Bitcoin’s ATH was mostly influenced by institutional buys.
Digital currencies are gradually going mainstream in India since the country’s Supreme Court revoked the blanket ban imposed on cryptos by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The recent parabolic rise of Bitcoin (BTC) price has caused more attention and interest in the assets, as several Indian crypto exchanges witnessed a massive increase in the number of users since BTC tested a new high at over $40,000.
Bitcoin ATH brought massive growth for Indian crypto exchanges
The Binance-owned Indian crypto exchange, WazirX, and other prominent exchanges saw more than a 100 percent increase in customers after Bitcoin’s ATH, according to a survey report by Bit2Buzz. The Binance-backed exchange recorded about 523 percent increase in trading volume and 180 percent in new users. The oldest Indian crypto exchange, Unocoin, reported a 100 percent increase in users. The Indian unit of London’s crypto-friendly online bank, Cashaa, witnessed as high as 980 percent growth in users.
CoinDCX also revealed that they’d seen a conservative month-to-month growth of 25-30 percent. Other Indian crypto platforms with notable increases include ZebPay (19.5 percent), Bitbns (300 percent), and Pocketbits (25 percent). These companies attributed the growth in Bitcoin’s price to institutional adoption. However, the founder of WazirX, Nischal Shetty, believes that youths are the most interested in holding cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin.
“Youth favors BTC over traditional investment, and WazirX has a huge young user base,” Shetty said, adding that they have also seen “a lot of institutional investors, and hedge funds in the US, and large companies like Square entering in crypto.”
Crypto taxation in India
Although the Indian crypto market is only waking to adoption after struggles for years with the RSI ban, the authorities have been considering taxing returns from Bitcoin. Cryptopolitan reported on December 29 that the Indian Central Economic Intelligence Bureau submitted the proposal of an 18 percent tax on Bitcoin. The move was speculated to be another way for the government to generate revenue amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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