“Seeking a balanced tax framework and favorable crypto regulation in the budget” – Digital Transformation News

A balanced tax framework, introduction of favourable crypto regulations and promotion of entrepreneurship in the Web3 sector are some of the key representations that cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX has made to the Centre on the budget, Co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta told Piyush Shukla during an interaction. Excerpts:

What are the key representations of crypto? industry to the government for the Budget?

A balanced tax framework is beneficial for the crypto ecosystem, and this is one of the points we have been advocating with the Centre for the Budget. Secondly, the industry wants to be regulated and this is necessary for customer protection. We have been urging the government to launch a favourable regulatory framework. Globally, more and more countries are developing a clearly defined regulatory framework. The last request is to foster entrepreneurship in the Web3 sector.

In the early days of the Internet, many innovations took place outside Indiamainly in the US. These companies are now worth trillions of dollars. The Web3 sector alone can add $1.1 trillion to India’s GDP and the government can help make that happen.

How can we prevent Indian customers from using non-compliant foreign cryptocurrency exchanges for trading?

This is a very important question. Esya Centre, a third-party agency, has conducted a lengthy analysis and recently published a report, stating that despite the official blocking of nine foreign virtual digital asset (VDA) exchange websites and apps in India in January 2024, non-compliant exchanges have still seen sharp increases in trading volumes from Indian users, which can be primarily attributed to the changes in the VDA tax architecture announced in the FY23 budget.

These are real numbers. Many Indian clients use foreign exchange services due to high taxation in their country and opaque regulatory framework. This is not without risk for clients. These are Indian funds, they must stay in India. Government intervention is needed to ensure this. Clients should only interact with regulated and compliant VDA service providers.

What was the rationale behind the acquisition of Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange BitOasis?

We are investors in BitOasis and have been interacting with the team for almost two years. After the initial investment, we have seen the progress the company has made. In addition to being profitable, it is very strong financially. It operates in one of the fastest growing crypto markets in the world. We wanted to work more deeply with BitOasis. So we first made a strategic investment that naturally turned into a completed acquisition.

Over the last six years, we have grown from a small startup to India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and a dominant force in Web3. Global expansion has always been a part of our growth strategy. With this acquisition, we will leverage our national presence technology and capabilities developed for Indian markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.

Will you keep the current team at BitOasis?

The current BitOasis management team and employees will remain. We are currently strengthening the BitOasis team with new capital. The company’s strategy will also continue, with the only addition being the technology that CoinDCX will bring, subject to approval by local regulatory authorities.

What are your plans?

We are increasing the breadth and depth of our products. We have been working on introducing Web3 mode on the CoinDCX app. The thought process was to enable Web3 access directly to our 15 million customer base right within the product itself. We are constantly introducing new products. We are making efforts for popular adoption of Web3.

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