Belfrics Resumes Trading In India
Belfrics announced on Tuesday that it has resume trading operations in India. It claims to be“India’s fastest growing cryptocurrency exchange and blockchain development platforms.” According to the exchange, it has added four new coins to its platform: bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH), ripple (XRP), and litecoin (LTC). Before then, only BTC was available. The company plans to launch 20 new cryptocurrencies in the next 6 months.
The COO of Belfrics Group, Jabeer KM, said: “India is a key market for us when it comes to crypto trading. With the launch of these new coins, we are targeting a base of at least 2,500,000 new traders on our platform by December 2018.”
“A dedicated app for live order-book trading of various altcoins,” was also launched by the exchange. Santhosh Palavesh, the group’s Chief Innovation Officer, explained that “traders can now securely link their assets with our Belfrics wallet…The new app will be available for both Android and iOS users.”
Belfrics Group was founded in 2014 and its headquarters is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It operates crypto exchanges in Malaysia, Singapore, Bahrain, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and India. The company’s development center is in the Indian city of Bengaluru. Traders will be able to enjoy crypto-to-crypto trading on its platform from this month.
Inc42 described that Belfrics had to suspend its crypto exchange operations in India in early January after the banks stopped providing payments solutions to the company. Praveenkumar Vijayakumar, Belfrics Group’s founder and CEO, told the news outlet at the time that “Many payment service providers (PSP) [in India] have stopped giving services to [crypto] exchanges.”
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued circular banning banks and financial institutions under its control from providing services to crypto companies. This was last April. The CEO told Indian news service that, “Before taking this decision, industry participants were not consulted, public debates were not initiated and public opinion polls were not undertaken. Even the findings of the committee were not published.” The central bank has admitted that the ban was issued without proper research.
Jabber KM elaborated on RBI’s ban in Tuesday’s announcement: “We understand that the RBI has reservations on trading in cryptocurrencies and digital currencies. But we are confident that they will be coming up with their own set of regulations for this industry. From our end, we are making sure that Belfrics Group is ready with multiple options for our Indian customers when crypto trading becomes regularized.”
Crypto industry participants have petitioned with the Supreme court to challenge the ban since it was issued.
The supreme court has agreed to hear the cases on July 3, earlier than the previously scheduled date: July 20. The ban is supposed to be effective as from July 5.
