The ban imposed on crypto exchanges in India by the country’s central bank has resulted in the local community resorting to P2P methods to trade digital currencies. In October last year, one of the foremost crypto enthusiasts in India, Nischal Shetty took to social media to campaign for a crypto-friendly regulation.
Bitcoin Whitepaper Anniversary
Shetty who is the CEO of a crypto exchange Warzix started the Twitter campaign on October 31, which coincided with the 10th anniversary of Satoshi Bitcoin whitepaper presentation.
According to Shetty, the Twitter campaign has garnered millions of impressions and more than 50,000 re-tweets with attendant effects.
Shetty has targeted opinion leaders, politicians such as lawmakers and the general public in the campaign which he said is aimed at education and sensitization on the benefits of cryptocurrencies to India.
#ISupportCrypto
Among the popular hash-tags in the campaign is “IndiaWantsCrypto”. Others are “ISupportCrypto”. Shetty said that the essence is to let opinion leaders know that Indian youths have found in crypto a pathway to wealth.
He also said that the inability of governments to provide employment for all citizens should be a motivation to allow wealth-creating innovations such as cryptocurrencies to thrive.
Shetty announced on the 100th day campaign that his tweets generate thousands of views and hundreds of re-tweets daily and that there has been upsurge of support for the campaign.
Tags Prime Minister
Shetty routinely tags the country’s prime minister Narendra Modi and the Minister of Finance, Arun Jaitley with his messages.
One of the trending tweets is,
“Please bring positive regulations in crypto and over 5 million crypto Indians will be thankful to you. Youth of India have found a new way to make wealth & this is especially important when there are not enough jobs for everyone.”
More Trade for Exchanges
Exchanges in the country have since reported a spike in trade volumes as more Indians resort to peer to peer crypto trading with the exchanges working as escrow to secure trading parties.
For instance Warzix, Shetty’s exchange reported January 23 that it regularly conducts daily trade volumes of 50 BTC acting as an escrow in daily trades valued at $14 million.
Other exchanges have also reported better times than last year after the Reserve Bank of India placed restrictions on the accounts of crypto exchanges effectively banning them.
Encouraging Users to Deposit Fiat
The Supreme Court of India will hear the case this month. Shetty and the Indian crypto community have been mounting pressure on the government to see to it that any regulatory frameworks marshaled out is favorable to Indian crypto use.
Jacob Mani, the marketing officer of Instashift, another crypto exchange with presence in India said that business has slightly improved. Mani said that in the past few weeks there were times with higher sellers than buyers. He concluded that this is a sign of a market that’ll still pick up.
Other exchanges have been giving traders incentives to make fiat deposits all in the quest to see better volumes.
The Indian government has contacted a law firm, Nishith Desai Associates to present its proposals on the mode which the Indian crypto regulation would take.
Meanwhile, there’s a general positive outlook that the Supreme Court and government would soon come up with policies that favor India’s crypto community.
