India’s Crypto Market is Growing Despite Stubborn Regulators

It looks like the repeated warnings by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), underlying the risks associated with cryptocurrencies have done little to dissuade the growing crypto investor-community in the country. This is evident from the fact that despite the lack of a traditional support system, India’s bitcoin trading currently accounts for ten percent of the global net volume.

Moving Against the Current

Sure, the country is lagging behind many smaller economies when it comes to mass adoption of virtual currencies, but it appears to be on the right trajectory in becoming a key contributor to the global crypto economy in the foreseeable future. At least, that’s what a recent study by Indonesian company that specializes in facilitating offline crypto coin trading Pudix found.

The survey encompassing 3,000 respondents from around the world focused on understanding the growth of digital currencies among mainstream consumers in some of the biggest markets worldwide. These include India, Japan, Indonesia, the US, Russia, and the UK.

The results followed expected trends as respondents gave a clear indication that Indians are a lot savvier than the authorities representing them. The majority of those surveyed were bullish about cryptocurrencies.

For example, 68 percent of the Indian respondents believed that they would start using cryptocurrencies at some point in the next ten years. Among all the countries surveyed, only Indonesia had a higher percentage of respondents–74 percent–who were bullish about bitcoin and the crypto market in general.

The survey also established that given a chance, many Indians are willing to come aboard on the crypto bandwagon. The respondents were asked what would do if they were given $1,000 to spend as they wished. 24 percent of the Indians surveyed said they would deposit it in the bank, whereas 16 percent said they were more interested in buying cryptocurrencies.

Compared to that, 12 percent said they would invest the money in stocks or bonds, 11 percent said they would buy an iPhone X, and nine percent said they would spend it on charity.

The PudiX survey also indicated that more and more Indians are now willing to look beyond bitcoin. Forty percent of respondents said they were optimistic about the potential of litecoin compared to 28 percent who viewed ethereum more favorably. Ripple and DogeCoin both closely followed with the backing of 21 percent.

Of course, bitcoin continues to top the charts with 68 percent respondents still willing to bet on it.

According to experts, the growing enthusiasm in India’s investor community about crypto has caused some serious concern in the government machinery which has since reacted by refusing to recognize virtual currencies as legal tender. It even went as far as equating some digital assets to the likes of a Ponzi scheme.

Although it is unlikely that the government will impose an outright ban on crypto trading anything soon, its stubborn pushback has forced PudiX to halt its expansion plans in the country temporarily. The company was earlier preparing to launch a network of point-of-sale (PoS) terminals to enable Indian investors to buy, sell, and transact in digital currencies over the counter.