"You can't stop things like Bitcoin. It will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust. World governments will have to readjust" - John McAfee, Founder of McAfee.

Unauthorized - RBI

RBI, on December 24, 2013, issued a press release on virtual currencies like bitcoins stating that creation, trade and usage of virtual currencies as a medium for payment is not authorized by any central bank or monetary authority.
Further, RBI cautioned virtual currency traders and users to various security related risks such as hacking, malware attack, etc.
While RBI has not legalized bitcoins, it has declared them unauthorized as of now.

While there where the dark clouds of ban, illegality and others, some of us were bold enough to get into the field of crypto-currencies and make their own luck. Many startups emerged out of this. India proved to be an ideal place for Bitcoin startups. It has the right startup culture, huge market opportunity and a growing economy.
Here are some of the Indian Bitcoin based startups –

UnoCoin:

Unocoin is one of the leading Bitcoin exchange in India at the moment. Unocoin is based out of Bangalore and Tumkur, is part of CoinMonk Ventures Private Limited. They are referred to as the Coinbase of India. Unocoin offers Bitcoin wallet and exchange services to the Indian customers.

CoinSecure:

CoinSecure is another Bitcoin exchange, with offices in Bangalore and Delhi. CoinSecure is a brainchild of a group of Bitcoin enthusiasts. Apart from being a Bitcoin exchange, it also provides a secure Bitcoin trading platform.

ZebPay:

Zebpay is one of the recent additions to the list of Indian Bitcoin startups. Zebpay is a simplified mobile Bitcoin wallet that allows peer-to-peer Bitcoin transfer using mobile number. By making Bitcoin transfer as simple as sending an IM on WhatsApp or WeChat, anyone who knows how to use a smartphone can make Bitcoin transactions. Even for Bitcoin enthusiasts, it saves them from using wallet addresses each time they want to make a transaction.

Offices Raided, Accounts Frozen - DABFI Born

With those dark clouds of uncertanity around during which many of the offices of the startups got raided by Income Tax Department and got their accounts frozen, the startups jointly formed an association known as DABFI(Digital Assets and Blockchain Foundation India). It is an association of people interested in Advocacy of use of Digital Assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc within India with an objective to educate people about risk involved with investing and trading crypto tokens.

Time for an online Petition

Seeing no other way forward DABFI started a petition on petition.org to get the support of the common masses to help persuade the Indian Government to take crypto space seriously. The petition got a huge success in number of signatories and caught the attention of the officials concerned.

Gained attention + Publicity

This was the first time that ministry of finance announced a committee to discuss the matter. Japan declaring bitcoin as a medium of payment may also have helped in softening the rocks. Now bitcoin was in open media and gaining publicity.

Committee Set

The high-level interdisciplinary committee established by ministry of Finance to examine the existing Bitcoin framework comprised of a cohort of top-level officials from the Department of Economic Affairs, financial services, revenue (CBDT), the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Reserve Bank of India, NITI Aayog, and even the State Bank of India.

What we got - Success

According to the official, even though the government may not confer a legal position to Bitcoin, it would definitely assign a regulatory body to monitor the cryptocurrency’s use. The official gave a brief update about the industry interaction saying,

“We have had five meetings have consulted all ministries, public, stakeholders, (exchanges such as Zebpay and Unocoin). We will submit the report by July-end.”

There are speculations that Securities and Exchange Board of India may fill in the position by regulating the presently unregulated cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the country. And, the Reserve Bank of India may come into the picture if the government does indeed decide to go ahead and designate Bitcoin as a currency.

Indian Crypto space is growing

Last week before the news broke, a Bitcoin trade analyst, Chris Burniske said , according to fesh data, the number of trades for India increased substantially and accounted for 10 percent of global cryptocurrency trade in the previous month.

Interested in Crypto?

Now you may be thinking how you can buy or sell Bitcoins in India. Well there are well established exchanges in india where you can buy bitcoins by NetBanking, Bank Transfer, Paytm and other similar methods. Some of them are Zebpay, Unocoin, CoinSecure, LocalBitcoins. I welcome you in crypto space. It is awesome.

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