Coinbase stopped offering trading services in India last month, citing the central bank and government as reasons. On a May 10 earnings call, Brian Armstrong, the company’s CEO, said that the country’s authorities are using “soft pressure” to restrict cryptocurrency trading inside its borders.
The public crypto exchange located in the United States commenced operations in India on April 7 amid much fanfare. Customers may deposit monies on the National Payments Corporation of India’s platform, which was designed and operated by the business (NPCI).
However, just a few hours after Coinbase’s launch, the NPCI released a statement claiming that it “was not aware” of any cryptocurrency exchange using UPI to make purchases. Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges in the country were forced to shut down the service as a result.
The Supreme Court has ruled that cryptocurrencies cannot be prohibited in India, although certain government officials, such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), remain skeptical. This has been dubbed a’shadow ban’ in the media; basically, they’re putting subtle pressure behind the scenes to disable some of these payments, which may be received through UPI.
On Coinbase’s May 10 earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong informed analysts.
The next step
The company wants to work with the government and “focus on relaunching,” according to Armstrong. He claims that Indian customers are really interested in cryptocurrency.
“I think there’s a number of paths that we have to relaunch with other payment methods there. And that’s the default path going forward. So my hope is that we will be back in India in relatively short order, along with a number of other countries, where we’re pursuing international expansion similarly,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of India is concerned about cryptocurrencies.
However, Armstrong believes that choices made by government agencies may be in violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling from 2020. The RBI ban was found illegal and unconstitutional by the country’s top court at the time.
The Supreme Court has never said that the government can’t regulate cryptocurrencies. The RBI ban is “irrational and harsh,” according to the report.
“I guess just to zoom out for a minute, one of our theories here, and my theory is that action produces information. So it’s not always clear as we go to these countries all over the world, everybody is in varying states of kind of education or lack thereof about crypto. And there’s a lot of work to go meet with policymakers around the world and kind of teach them about what the AML (anti-money laundering) capabilities are and what are the positive benefits,” Armstrong said.
Coinbase has invested in CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX, two Indian cryptocurrency exchanges, and runs incubators with crypto-focused groups like Buidler’s Tribe.
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