Garrick Hileman, the head of research at Blockchain.com, said in an interview that Indian banks are showing interest in cryptocurrencies but are also skeptical of heading further into this space due to the regulatory uncertainty. While speaking to Data Quest, Hileman also hinted that Blockchain.com still does not have a payment gateway in India for the same reason. But it is a goal for the firm, Garrick added. Earlier last week, during a webinar on Indian regulations, the CEO of WazirX exchange Nischal Shetty also highlighted that Indian banks were interested in getting involved in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space.
Crypto regulations in India are still in a grey area.
Currently, there are no specific laws in India that govern oversee crypto regulations. However, crypto exchanges are allowed to carry out their operations and provide services to users. Earlier, the Supreme Court of India had declared the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to prohibit banking services to crypto as unconstitutional, which brought crypto back in the country. The CEO of Indian crypto exchange Wazirx said that the banks approaching the exchange to seek advice seemed inclined to explore the technology’s use case in international transactions explicitly.
In a webinar earlier, the former Finance Secretary of India, Subhash Chandra Garg, who had proposed a blanket on crypto earlier, said that crypto should not be used as currency in the country.
India witnessed a surge in peer-to-peer bitcoin trading.
According to the data published by Useful Tulips, emerging markets have established new records for weekly peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading. Indian crypto market posted a new record for trade activity, with $3.4 million worth of BTC trading hands over the past seven days. As reported earlier, India’s P2P markets started reporting significant momentum from the second quarter onwards, with Indian volume beating out its December 2017 all-time high of $2.95 million last month before consistently rallying above $3 million this month.
