Indian Crypto Firms Suggest Policy Ideas to Government Ahead of Possible Ban

Crypto exchanges in India are planning to present the country's government and central bank with their vision for a productive regulatory regime, The Economic Times reported Tuesday.

The group – including Unocoin, WazirX, CoinDCX, Paxful, Pocketbits, ZebPay and Coinswitch – compiled a package of documents explaining the current state of the crypto industry in India and possible ways to regulate it.

The industry entreaty comes as Indian lawmakers float a potential ban of private cryptocurrencies.

The package will be sent to Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the Reserve Bank of India, the Department of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, according to the report.

The presentation, reviewed by CoinDesk, says India currently has more than 10 million crypto users, over half-a-million day traders and more than 3,000 people employed in the crypto industry. The presentation mentions the money-laundering and environmental concerns related to cryptocurrencies and suggests a package of policy proposals.

The exchanges suggested research on potential consequences if India bans crypto, proposals on the upcoming regulation, a draft code of conduct for crypto exchanges to adopt and an overview of crypto regulation practices around the world.

India is looking to pass its first-ever cryptocurrency legislation, though Sitharaman partly soothed industry fears of overreach. The finance minister said on March 15 the government will still "allow certain windows for people to do experiments on the blockchain, bitcoin or cryptocurrency."

However, around the same time, rumors started circulating Indian authorities might start blocking IP addresses of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Despite the regulatory uncertainty, India has an active crypto market, which grew significantly over the pandemic year of 2020, as CoinDesk previously reported. The country has a large young population and is the biggest online market in the world, according to research data.