RBI Ban Hearing in Two Days – What Indian Crypto Exchanges Are Expecting

The Indian supreme court will hear all petitions against the crypto banking ban by the Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday. News.Bitcoin.com talked to the CEOs of several Indian exchanges to find out what they are expecting from the hearing, trader sentiment, their exchanges’ current trading volumes, and how they see the court’s ruling affecting the crypto community.

The Beginning of the Journey

In response to the ban, a number of crypto exchanges operating in India have come up with methods to allow users to continue to deposit and withdraw Indian rupees. Among them are Wazirx, Instashift, and Coindcx exchanges which offer services based on the exchange-escrowed peer-to-peer (P2P) model.

Wazirx’s CEO, Nischal Shetty, shared with news.Bitcoin.com:

Rahul Chitale, CEO of Instashift, told news.Bitcoin.com that “The ruling will surely have some bearing and the SC’s views will shape a lot of the regulatory thinking, but it’s unlikely to have an immediate tactical impact.” Citing that similar regulatory hurdles are seen globally, he described:

Sumit Gupta, CEO of Coindcx, explained to news.Bitcoin.com that “All Indian exchanges and crypto traders are eyeing the SC ruling.” In the long run, however, he believes that “Indian traders will eventually find ways to invest in cryptocurrencies via some innovative channels.” Emphasizing that “a negative ruling will just shift users to P2P trading platforms,” he asserted:

Trading Volumes Rise Amid RBI Ban

For Instashift, Chitale described that “since the last set of RBI related developments in the past couple of months, we have continued to see strong 20-25% growth in trading volumes month on month over the last 2 quarters of our operation,” adding:

Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of one of India’s largest crypto exchanges, Unocoin, recently shared a similar sentiment with news.Bitcoin.com. He revealed that on his exchange, “The volumes have significantly come down as this [RBI’s ban] is not only restricting the new users joining the platform but it is also hurting the sentiments of the present users.” Unocoin currently does not offer P2P trading.

What Exchanges Are Expecting from the Ruling

Wazirx is also prepared for whichever direction the ruling may take. If a stay order is granted on the RBI ban, “we’ll immediately resume bank deposits and withdrawals for all our users,” Shetty confirmed, emphasizing that, otherwise, Wazirx’s P2P solution “is already working great for all the users in India.” He further detailed:

Citing that “as an asset class, ‘new money’ into crypto will come on the merit of crypto and other macro factors (like capital controls, taxation etc),” he concluded that “Broadly, we don’t expect trader and retail investor sentiment to diminish in that regard.”

Similarly, Gupta confirmed that Coindcx is “already prepared for the worst and have backup plans no matter which way the ruling swings.” Nonetheless, he said: