Confirmed: One More Exchange To Launch Ethereum Trading

24.02.2016

Good news for Ethereum community and especially Indian traders: the bitcoin exchange BTCXIndia confirmed its plans to offer ETH/INR trading pair starting March 9. The official press release to be issued on March 5.

The information went public with the Reddit rumor when user ethexindia stated in the post published this Monday:

“S Capital Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the company behind BTCXIndia is taking the cryptocurrency race even further with its upcoming Ethereum exchange offering trading between ETH & INR.”

Forklog inquired the exchange officials as to confirm or deny this information and here’s what they answered:

“Yes, I can confirm the company behind BTCXIndia, S Capital Solutions Ltd, is launching a trading platform to allow Indian nationals to buy and sell ETH for INR, and will facilitate trading via an open order book in the same fashion as existing BTCXIndia,” stated Linus Lindgren, the strategic investor and advisor for BTCXIndia exchange.

What are the future plans of the exchange regarding Ethereum?

“BTCXIndia is today the largest bitcoin exchange in India with volumes of 200-300 BTC per day – a small number if you compare to other international exchanges, but hopefully only the beginning of a large movement in India, given the country’s huge potential (1.3b people where up to 75% are underbanked, high mobile phone and internet penetration and a thriving tech industry with highly skilled engineers and tech enthusiasts),” Lindgren said.

Kamesh Mupparaju, the company’s CEO, provided a more detailed comment concerning BTCXIndia’s further plans and the potential of Ethereum trading in India.

“India has capital controls, so users can’t access exchanges based in other currencies than Indian rupees. In recent month and the build up toward Homestead, we’ve seen a high interest from our customers to get direct access to ETH trading, so we certainly think the ETH market has a high potential in India.”

“Our plan is to continue to offer Indians access to crypto currencies, assist authorities to find a regulatory framework that works in India, and be the leading exchange and hub in India for crypto currency. We are also working on informational material for our users about what ethereum offers in terms of smart contracts and decentralised computing, and hope to drive adoption that way,” he added.

The Lack Of Clear Legal Status for Cryptocurrencies Leads to Uncertainty

The community was rather positive about the news on ETH to be traded in India. However, the issue of whether the regulatory environment is “favourable for exchanges in India now” remains essential.

“…the regulatory position is as ever unclear and there has been no word from the government in recent times. This could be seen as a positive as they appear happy to let things develop and conduct more research. What we can say is that Bitcoin is legal in India and so too is Ethereum.

“India is a sleeping giant in crypto markets. Adoption of crypto, whilst growing is still fairly low compared to other Asian nations. But adoption of crypto is what we are promoting, now onto what will be our second front with ETHEXIndia, which will be a standalone exchange,” Reddit user ethexindia commented further.

With the world’s second population and GDP reaching $2 trillions, India is also the second country in the world by online users count. According to the World Bank, the country is the leader for incoming remittances.

Contrary to this, the recent study conducted by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. Global Development Lab, titled Beyond Cash, revealed much less pleasant statistics. Pursuant to the report’s findings, as much as 97% of retail transactions in India are conducted in cash or check. While only few consumers use digital payments (about 11% of them used debit cards during last year), there is even tinier fraction of Indian merchants accepting digital payments. So India is well beyond the Western countries in terms of cashless payments adoption.

This might give room for cryptocurrency infrastructure to be developed at the same or even faster pace as banking services, especially considering the country’s need for reasonably priced remittances.