Addressing India’s not so ‘crypto curious anymore’ case

Google data revealed the negative influence of the Union Budget on the Indian crypto investors. The last 90 days’ search data has shown a massive dip which makes one question the euphoria surrounding crypto in India.

As per Google Trends, searches for “cryptocurrency” were at their highest at 100 on 1 February, the Budget Day. But the levels have dipped drastically ever since. And, it has been floating in the range of 17-9 on most days.

Now, the most pertinent question is- Why should one look at the Google Trends data. Well, to gauge the crypto market sentiment. Notably, due to crypto taxation, there has been a massive dip in trading volumes across all Indian crypto exchanges.

Source: Google Trends (April 22, 2022)

What do the insiders say about volume?

The influence of the taxation was much anticipated by exchanges in India. In this context, Nischal Shetty, CEO of India’s largest crypto exchange WazirX stated,

“I believe we will have some idea by the second or third week of April on whether crypto taxes will impact the industry or people will still trade and not worry too much about the changes.”

The community apprehensions seem to have come true. According to data from Coinmarketcap, between 7-14 April, the Indian crypto exchanges lost an average of 60% on trading volumes as compared to the pre-tax days. This represents a huge downfall in the crypto industry in India which holds the most number of crypto holders globally.

You may wonder if the decrease in volume had any effects on the crypto exchanges. In a recent incident, the crypto exchange WazirX was rumored to be shifting its operations to Dubai- these rumors caused a huge uproar.

However, it should also be noted that WazirX, later on, squashed all these rumors in a 19 April tweet, stating they will continue to operate from Mumbai.

Moreover, as reported earlier by AMBCrypto, many Indian banks and payment service providers have halted their services to crypto exchanges. As a result, users have been unable to make fiat deposits to their crypto exchange wallets.

In fact, many exchanges, including WazirX and CoinSwitch Kuber, have removed the option to deposit money through UPI.

That said, the fate of crypto in India looks difficult to read, at the moment.