Crypto adoption in India is on the rise despite the coronavirus pandemic and domestic crisis in the banking industry. The crypto uptake surge is as a result of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lifting the ban banking institutions from doing business with firms dealing in crypto.
The ban which was lifted on March 4 by the highest court in the sub-continent has seen trading volumes surge in the last one month. According to the CoinSwitch exchange CEO Ashish Singhal, trading volumes have been surging owing to the clarification offered during the Supreme Court ruling.
Is crypto adoption in India translating into usage?
According to Kumar Gaurav the CEO at Cashaa, a cryptocurrency banking firm, after lifting the ban, trading volumes rose by 800 percent. This also saw the volume of BTC cross the 600 mark in less than 24 hours.
This could have been as a result of panic trading before the government changed mind. There was a rumor circulating that the government was planning to declare crypto illegal and traders were taking advantage of the Supreme Court ruling. However, Gaurav says this is what fueled the current price surge.
The strong momentum has been evident despite the domestic banking sector crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. However, it is not clear whether the growing volumes are translating to usage or just panic buying and selling of digital currencies.
Yes Bank collapse and crypto adoption in India
The surge in crypto trading volumes has been linked to the collapse of the fourth largest bank in the country; the Yes Bank on March 6. This made confidence in the banks take a nose dive driving users to crypto bringing exchanges back to life. The crypto trading panic was a huge boost for Cashaa; it saw the daily BTC trading volumes grow by 450 percent.
The global spread of coronavirus during the month of March saw the Indian Equity Index drop by 23 percent and the Indian Rupee dropped to trade at 77.4 against the USD. However, after a three-week coronavirus lockdown announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24, the month was the best and crypto volumes doubled adds the CoinSwitch CEO.
Cashing in on crypto adoption boom
More crypto trading platforms have also reported increased volumes. WazirX in Mumbai has seen the number of new users increase by 25 percent after the coronavirus lockdown according to the firms’ CEO Nischal Shetty. The platform has reported a growth of 60 percent during the month of March alone.
CoinDCX exchange has also seen a growth of over 78 percent in the BTC/UNR pair. The spike is also attributed to the 24/7 trading facility that crypto exchanges provide to their customers says CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta.
