Because India accounts for over a quarter of Coinstore’s total active users, “it made logical for us to grow into the market,” said Charles Tan, director of marketing at Coinstore, in a statement to Reuters. On being asked why Coinstore was launching in the country even though there were plans to implement a crypto-currency crackdown, Tan responded: “There have been policy flip-flops, but we hope things will turn out positively, and we are optimistic that the Indian government will come out with a healthy framework for cryptocurrencies.”
In a previous report, two anonymous officials told Reuters that the New Delhi administration intends to prevent cryptocurrency trading by charging high capital gains and other taxes on the transactions. According to a legislative agenda for the winter session, which is due to begin later this month, it has said that only specific cryptocurrencies would be permitted to promote the underlying technology and its applications.
Tan said that Coinstore intends to hire around 100 personnel in India and invest $20 million on marketing, recruiting, and development of crypto-related goods and services for the Indian market, among other things. Coinstore is the second global exchange to create a local unit in India in recent months, following in the footsteps of CrossTower, which launched its local unit in September. Coinstore is a cryptocurrency exchange based in New Delhi.
Since the beginning of this year, the price of Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, has more than doubled, drawing a large number of Indian investors. The Indian cryptocurrency industry believes that there are between 15 million and 20 million crypto investors in the country, with total crypto assets of around 400 billion rupees ($5.33 billion). According to Tan, Coinstore intends to expand into Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Vietnam in the near future.