Singaporean crypto exchange enters India amid regulatory uncertainty

Despite India’s unpredictive stance towards crypto regulations, Singaporean crypto exchange Coinstore has allocated a $20 million fund to set up three new offices in the Indian cities of Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.

Coinstore announced to launch its web and app platform in India for spot and futures trading, opening up a new crypto investment avenue for Indian investors. The platform mandates Know Your Customer verification before allowing users to purchase and sell over 50 cryptocurrencies.

— Coinstore (@coinstore_en) November 29, 2021

Citing Coinstore’s goal to simplify crypto adoption and trading experience, co-founder Jennifer Lu said:

“We are truly excited to have launched our app in India, with over 20% of our active users from India, we decided to start local operations to fully support our Indian users.”

Complimenting the plan to set up offices in India, Coinstore has also announced 100 immediate local openings for customer support, marketing and operations division. According to Lu:

“The $20 million fund allocated for India expansion will be utilized mainly for marketing, hiring talent, and development of crypto-related products & services for the Indian market.”

Related: Crypto prices in India tumble after crypto bill announced

The Indian parliament announced it would introduce 26 new bills in the Winter Session, which included a crypto bill that aims to ban private cryptocurrencies while creating an official digital currency.

While the bill is yet to clarify the meaning of the word “private”, the announcement sparked a temporary panic selling phase on the WazirX crypto exchange. As a result of the massive sell-off, the Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped 14.8% locally on the exchange within two hours.