Huge Demand for 'P2P' Crypto Trading Seen in India After RBI Ban

Exchange-escrowed trading directly between cryptocurrency buyers and sellers is growing in popularity in India following the crypto banking ban imposed by the country’s central bank. One local exchange, in particular, is seeing “tremendous” response from Indian traders for this service as “tens of thousands of new users have signed up” in a month.

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Indians Warming Up to New Solution

Since the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), banned banks from providing fiat service to crypto companies, local cryptocurrency exchanges have come up with solutions for their users to be able to withdraw Indian rupees. One popular solution is exchange-escrowed trading which local exchanges call peer-to-peer (P2P) trading.

Indian crypto exchange Wazirx launched this service about a month ago. CEO Nischal Shetty told news.Bitcoin.com that the response from traders for this service has been “tremendous,” stating:

People love P2P…Everyone had their doubts whether P2P would work or not, the convenience etc…[But now] We’re seeing above 1 trade match every minute happening in P2P…we’re talking about peer-to-peer transactions at a rate of more than 1 per minute.

He further revealed, “tens of thousands of new users have signed up on Wazirx after we introduced P2P. In fact we got more signups in the last 2 weeks than we got in the last 2 months.”

Platforms With Similar Services

The Wazirx P2P system was built “to replicate how a traditional order book in an exchange behaves,” the CEO described. It uses tether (USDT) in transactions. Sellers convert their cryptocurrencies to USDT and sell them for rupees. Buyers convert their rupees into USDT which can be used to trade any cryptocurrencies on the exchange. “Wazirx acts as an escrow account for holding the cryptos during the transaction,” the exchange detailed.

“The P2P system has replaced the previous system of depositing fiat into Wazirx account and in return getting INR balance in your account,” Shetty explained to news.Bitcoin.com. “What happens now is that you deposit the fiat into another user’s account and get USDT in return…After you get USDT, you can trade in our USDT market in the regular way (non P2P).”

Furthermore, orders are automatically matched by the exchange. “The auto matching open order book in P2P has never been attempted before and people love the ease,” he noted, elaborating:

In most cases, P2P is even faster than the traditional method of deposits and withdrawals people here were used to because in P2P if the person is active online then they would immediately do the money transfer to the peer’s bank account.

A few other exchanges also offer similar solutions. Coindelta, for example, launched its P2P exchange called Flux on July 26. Users can transfer their BTC, ETH, XRP and USDT between the main Coindelta exchange and Flux. Other cryptos must be converted to USDT on the Coindelta exchange first before sending to Flux.

A popular exchange-escrowed service in the country that uses a classified-style order book listing is Loop by Koinex crypto exchange. Currently, only BTC, ETH, and XRP are listed on the platform for trade.

Zecoex and Giottus crypto exchanges also offer services where users can make offers to sell from their crypto balances and then wait for buyers to select them from a list of available offers. Another exchange for Indians, Instashift, offers a platform for users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies between each other for five fiat currencies, including the Indian rupee.

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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, RBI, and Wazirx.

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