The idea is to rebuild trust in the crypto ecosystem, which kind of went sideways after the WazirX incident. I think it’s a good initiative, at least from our perspective users are liking it. We will see how it evolves… It is not the first incident globally and maybe not the last one as well.

I think there are two things that need to happen in India. First is on the platform itself, security must be taken with utmost seriousness. We at CoinSwitch work with industry grade custody providers, which are SOC Type 2 certified, and are globally recognised, holding billions of dollars in their pool. This is the security that those guys bring to the table to help any exchange manage their security. Plus, security doesn’t stop at using a custody provider. At company itself, you have to work regularly, because security is an ever evolving subject.

I think the second leg to it is regulations. How can regulations allow such incidents to first reduce and then in case it happens, what are the laws or what are the chances that users have to recover their funds, or what are the different ways in which they get them.

Yes, from Day One. So, our parent entity is in Singapore, because we have multiple business lines. But our CoinSwitch entity, which is under Bitcipher Labs, is registered in India, and all jurisdiction lies in India. So, for any user who faces any issue, Indian law dictates what happens. If the worst case happens, they don’t have to run to Singapore or any other country. While most exchanges jurisdictions are outside today, CoinSwitch has been in India, will remain in India, and hopefully with the right regulations, continue to flourish in India.

For the last two years, our wishlist has not changed. I think two factors are hurting the industry domestically, even when the global crypto industry is doing very well. One is loss offset. Today, if you buy two cryptos, one where you make ₹10,000 profit, or one where you have ₹10,000 loss, you still have to pay 30 per cent tax. So you are in net loss, even after making equal profit, which is hurting user sentiment.

Second is 1 the per cent TDS on all sell transactions…Because of these two reasons, the volumes in the industry have gone down. A lot of users kind of show mistrust that why the sector is singled out, in terms of having such a bad taxation framework. So, bringing taxation framework probably equal to the securities market is preferred. We are not opposed to TDS, maybe even STT. Convert that from 1 per cent to 0.01 per cent and you will still be able to track and trace every single transaction.

First is that they are crazy by the nature of it as well. Who could expect that a meme which is trending on the internet would have a financial implication ultimately. So, that’s what fascinates people. And I think a lot of people end up investing a part of their money into meme coins, because they’re looking for the next big trend into the ecosystem. 2021 was about NFTs, in 2017-18 it was about ICOs, in this cycle all the buzz is about the meme coins.

It’s not just memes anymore. I recently tweeted about a patient who raised funds by creating a crypto coin. So, it’s meme, but the power is going to the people, they’re able to create, tokenise any popular thing on the internet.

Absolutely, and that’s why platforms like us play a big part. We don’t list tokens where token supply is less. If you look at what happened (of a foreign influencer engaging in pump and dump), the majority of their tokens were held by the same group, which was initiating the sale. What they ended up doing was when the prices went up, they sold all their holdings. The price fell almost 95 to 98 per cent, and it never picked again. And that is why platforms like us are very important, who play a big part into what tokens get listed, and which don’t. If you come to CoinSwitch, you will probably find few meme coins, not all the meme coins that are available outside. I was just talking about how this meme craze gives people an opportunity to learn and get into the market.

I think ETFs have crossed over $50 billion in invested value. Gold took almost 10 years to achieve this feat, while Bitcoin achieved in less than a year. And, you know, probably in a year or so, it would cross the gold ETF itself. So that tells you the scale.