Indian Exchange Getting Ready For The Banking Ban By The Indian Central Bank
Come on the 5th of this month of July and the banking ban by the Indian central bank will be implemented. Unocoin, which is India’s most popular bitcoin wallet is working on banking alternatives. The CEO of the exchange during an interview spoke about what to expect when the ban begins, trader sentiment, and possible ways to bypass the ban.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) declared a crypto banking ban which is set to be implemented on the 5th of July. This was noted in the Central bank’s circular issued on the 6th. However, there are up to five known petitions against the ban that the Supreme Court will hear on 20th July. The petition by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) will be heard on the 3rd. Unocoin is one of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges plus it’s a member of IAMAI, others include exchanges like Zebpay and Coinsecure.
This past Saturday, the CEO and co-founder of Unocoin, Sathvik Viswanath explained that the sentiment among Indian traders “is quite weaker than before.” He also noted that banks would not support crypto exchanges customers “to send and receive INR as it would still violate the RBI policy which not only restricts entities but also individuals.” In addition to that Viswanath said “All customers are expecting the exchanges to figure out the alternatives. Long-term investors have not lost hopes… From the effective date [RBI’s ban], the businesses will have a tough time till the alternative methods have been figured out.”
Unocoin has up to 370,000 unique users and not long ago, the Bangalore based exchange launched a crypto-to-crypto trading platform called Unodx. Nevertheless, Unocoin was not the only exchange in India to launch an all-crypto platform, exchanges like Zebpay and Koinex did also. As an attempt for investors to continue to trade cryptos even without banking support.
This week, Unocoin announced to the public that it is working on banking alternatives for when the RBI ban is active. Unocoin made the following statements warning “Due to the RBI’s recent notification on ‘Prohibition on Dealing in Virtual Currencies. Our banking relationships are likely to be disrupted on before July 5th, 2018. We are in the process of deploying new mechanisms for INR deposits and withdrawals.”
The exchange finally mentioned that “This is not a small undertaking and it will take us some time to deploy new solutions. Customers can still deposit and withdraw INR through normal banking channels until further notice.”
