Will India's regulatory relaxation bring huge benefits to Bitcoin and other products?

On the 4th, the Indian Supreme Court overturned the two-year cryptocurrency trading ban imposed by the central bank on the country. There was cheering from all walks of life, and a Coindesk article even called it "a victory for the entire blockchain industry." Indian cryptocurrency experts said that the daily trading volume was between 50 and 60 million US dollars before the ban was issued in 2018, and it is expected that the trading volume will increase 10 times after the ban is overturned.

Compared with China, India has adopted stricter prohibitions on cryptocurrencies. The Central Bank of India implemented the ban in April 2018, prohibiting banks and other financial institutions from promoting "mission services related to virtual currencies" and ordering financial institutions to cut off all ties with individuals or companies that trade in virtual currencies such as Bitcoin within three months. The ban caused a sharp drop in trade volume and exchanges closed their businesses. The draft bill submitted by the Indian government to the Supreme Court in 2019 banned almost every aspect of cryptocurrency, including mining, purchasing, selling, trading, and issuing. India has almost become the country with the strictest cryptocurrency regulation in the world.

Despite the strictest regulation in the world, India's enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies has never diminished. Data shows that India ranks second only to the United States in terms of public opinion, and ranks fourth in the OTC market, second only to the United States, Venezuela and the United Kingdom.

What can India's regulatory relaxation bring to cryptocurrencies?

First: Huge user base. India has a population of 1.35 billion and will surpass China to become the world's most populous country in 2024. More importantly, the proportion of young people in India's population is higher, and they are more likely to become cryptocurrency users. Currently, there are tens of millions of cryptocurrency users in the world, and India's new users can bring exponential growth to cryptocurrency.

Second: Huge funds. In 2019, private equity investment in India hit a record high of $37 billion. Among them, there were 74 transactions with a single transaction value of more than $100 million. As China's economic growth slows down, India has become a mecca for global venture capital. Due to its token attributes, the cryptocurrency industry has more diversified and convenient venture capital methods. The relaxation of Indian regulations will bring huge funds to the entire cryptocurrency industry.

Third: More developers. India has cultivated the largest number of software development engineers in the world. Many of the CEOs and executives of today's top Internet companies in the United States are of Indian descent. India has always been the home of the third largest community on Github, with a 22% increase in the past year and a 75% increase in public repositories. More developers pouring into the cryptocurrency industry will drive the rapid development of industry technology and a closer integration with the real economy.

For the cryptocurrency world, the regulatory policies of major countries have become an extremely important factor. China's crackdown policy has reduced hundreds of millions of potential new users, and the US regulation of TELEGRAM tokens and Libra has directly hindered the two greatest cryptocurrency projects in recent years. But from another perspective, once there is a move in countries with strict regulation such as China, the United States, and India, it will become an important positive.

At present, the US regulation has a federal split tendency, with different state laws and regulations, and relatively slow progress; China's financial regulation is very strict on the surface, and there is no possibility of compliance in the short term; India, with its demographic dividend and economic growth rate, is expected to become the third largest economy after the United States and China in the near future. As a major Internet power, India's dramatic regulatory relaxation also has an event effect, which will allow more companies, capital, and young people to join the cryptocurrency industry.

For Chinese exchanges that have seen a slowdown in the number of new users, India must also be their focus. Binance, which has a high degree of internationalization, acquired WazirX, India's largest digital asset platform, in 2019. Customers will be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with Indian rupees (INR) on Binance Fiat Gateway. CoinDCX, one of India's largest cryptocurrency trading platforms and liquidity aggregators, has also announced a partnership with OKEx.