India: Binance’s CZ recognizes P2P market potential as RBI still hesitates

India managed to clear one of the many hurdles towards crypto-adoption in the country following the Supreme Court of India striking down the banking ban. Soon after the development, not only did many crypto-exchanges return home to continue their crypto-journey, but international crypto-exchanges like Binance also jumped in, with the platform going on to acquire WazirX. According to Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, the lifting of the aforementioned ban has driven tremendous growth in crypto-trading in India.

Binance integrated WazirX’s P2P trading platform just a few months ago as P2P remained the most popular and flexible trading model among users. In an exclusive interview with AMBCrypto, Binance CEO CZ focused on the growing demand from the community for adding INR for P2P trading to its Global P2P Merchants Program, which was followed by the integration and acquisition of the Indian exchange.

Noticing the growing trend of crypto-adoption and the demand for P2P trading in the country, CZ said,

“India is likely to leapfrog some of the traditional western finance infrastructure and enter a digital finance age directly, with blockchain and other emerging financial technologies. I believe India’s P2P market has 100 times growth potential, if not more.”

As the world turns to India speculating a crypto-boom in the near future, Indian exchanges are also demanding clarity from the country’s central bank – the Reserve Bank of India. On 4 May, the crypto-exchange approached the RBI citing clarity about their status, while also trying to grasp taxation policies accordingly, as per reports.

The crypto-exchanges, despite getting a green light from the Supreme Court about utilizing the banking facilities for their businesses, have still been facing a tough time from the banks. The exchanges wrote to the central bank to clarify their status in the country as the lender continued to deny banking services to them. Due to a lack of regulatory clarity, exchanges want the central bank to share at least the categorization under which exchanges have been placed under to understand the tax bracket they fall in.

This issue with banks denying services has escalated as the RBI has not provided an updated circular asking banks to let exchanges and users resume crypto-trading activities. With the attention of the world turned to India, the central bank may want to work with exchanges and businesses to define the status of these businesses and embark on a revolution.