Indians to replace gold with crypto as the holiday season rolls around

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Around 7 million Indians have already pumped over $ 1 billion into cryptocurrencies and the government must take on the task of enabling the fintech space to thrive in India.

Consider this, India’s digital asset trade jumped to $ 6.6 billion in May, from $ 923 million in April 2020, according to data from Chainalysis. What’s more, even people obsessed with gold were pouring billions into cryptocurrencies. On top of that, India also ranked # 2 in a survey of countries that use cryptocurrency the most, with 9% of respondents saying they use crypto. Considering this in the global context, the US and UK had the lowest proportion of cryptocurrency owners, at 8% and 9%, respectively.

Is the Indian discourse on these assets changing?

On the occasion of the upcoming holiday season in India, various crypto exchange platforms aimed to attract retail traders by distributing crypto. Meanwhile, raise awareness and encourage Indians to choose Bitcoin over their traditional choice at this time of year i.e. gold.

According to reports, leading Indian crypto exchanges, such as CoinDCX, WazirX and Unocoin, have been promoting cryptocurrencies as freebies Sathvik Vishwanath, the co-founder of Unocoin, said:

“Bitcoin and gift certificates can be an attractive option for users to consider, as more outreach activity is expected in the industry.

Additionally, CoinDCX executives saw the move as a way to “… create more awareness and share knowledge about crypto” through their initiatives.

That said, uncertainty regarding crypto regulations is high in India. This was mainly due to procrastination during the implementation of the crypto legislation. Ergo, the aforementioned development timeline is interesting.

Former Reserve Bank of India deputy governor Rama Gandhi recently urged lawmakers to clarify the asset class. In addition, he also said that cryptocurrencies should be treated as assets or commodities and not as currencies, regardless of the noise and speculation surrounding them.

Nonetheless, it will be interesting to watch the turn of events unfolding in the crypto-regulation scene in India.

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