Regulatory pressures and a broadening bank clampdown have seriously affected cryptocurrency exchanges in India. Their representatives claim bitcoin trading has dropped as much as 90 percent in the last two months. Cryptos are not considered legal tender in the country and authorities have demonstrated a negative attitude towards their use. At the same time, leading Indian banks have taken steps to limit exchange operations even before any rules mandating such policies are adopted.
Also read: Says Official
Regulatory Uncertainty, Hostile Attitude
Indian trading platforms have suffered from great uncertainty about the future of cryptocurrencies in the country. Authorities in Delhi have issued multiple warnings and have threatened to stifle the use of digital money for illicit purposes. They have repeatedly stated that cryptos, like bitcoin, are not considered legal tender in India. However, neither an outright ban, nor any clear regulations have been adopted to this day. While the work on a comprehensive legal framework continues, after that new regulations would be unveiled soon, some officials have that it is proving impossible to effectively regulate cryptocurrencies.
Despite the absence of government regulations, Indian banks have taken matters into their own hands. Without any mandate from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), commercial banks have been tightening the clamp on crypto trading. The country’s biggest financial institutions, including Citibank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and the State Bank of India, have already suspended trading accounts of bitcoin exchanges. They have also imposed measures to restrict crypto-related transactions conducted by ordinary citizens, with two banks customers they cannot use their credit, debit and prepaid cards to purchase cryptocurrencies.
The regulatory uncertainty and the hostile attitude have caused a significant decrease in transactions on local bitcoin trading platforms, the Economic Times reported. “There is a 90 percent drop in the volume of trade across all Indian exchanges,” chief executive of Coinsecure, Mohit Kalra, told ET. “Our volumes are down from around 300-400 bitcoins daily in December to about 30-40 bitcoins a day now,” he added describing a 10-fold decrease.
Banks Accused of Disruptive Behavior
The actions of Indian banks mirror similar moves by some of the world’s biggest banks, like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Last month they banned crypto purchases with their credit cards, justifying the measure with concerns about defaults due to dropping crypto values. Representatives of the Indian crypto industry have accused local banks of “irresponsible overreach”, “unilateral decisions”, and “disruptive stance”. “Without any clear mandate from regulators, asking us to close down our accounts, while refusing to give the reason in writing, is just disruptive to our business,” said Ajeet Khurana who is heading the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Committee of India (BACC). The organization is working to introduce in the sector.
Customers are panicking and getting agitated, as they are not able to receive their money.
That’s how the chief executive of another Indian exchange, Bixoxo, described the situation. “We are struggling to offer withdrawal services since our bank accounts are being shut. This has caused delays of up to one week for no mistake of ours”, said Hesham Rehman. “Our average volume has dropped from 300 – 500 bitcoins to 20 – 30 bitcoins now”, he added. The daily trading volumes of top Indian exchanges, like Zebpay and Koinex, have also decreased from 1,000 to 300-500 bitcoins.
According to Zebpay’s CEO Nischint Sanghavi, promoting the use of banking channels actually enables tracking and taxing cryptocurrencies. Banning it would not serve the purpose of curbing illegitimate transactions, he warmed. Sanghavi believes that know your customer procedures and anti-money laundering measures implemented by Indian exchanges can only aid the efforts to keep track of money flows.
The hostile environment has already forced two Indian platforms to . Btcxindia and Ethexindia, serving about 35,000 customers, halted cryptocurrency trading on March 5. As previously , more and more Indians have been trying to buy cryptocurrencies from abroad through overseas accounts of relatives and friends. Others have resorted to cash-based trading to acquire bitcoins or other cryptos. According to some reports, a new law banning unregulated deposits is on the way. If such legislation is adopted in India without provisions to legalize the crypto sector, these trends are likely to continue to evolve.
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Albeit a vast range of information resources available to everyone underlies the initial principle of Internet development, today users are facing restrictions in different ways. Frequently they lack an access to particular services and applications due to censorship employed by various groups of interests from all over the world.
This all comes in many forms. Nation states monitor the Internet traffic, so they can construct different profiles of their citizens. In such an environment, dissent becomes dangerous, and users are not able to express their honest political discord in some places. In a very similar way, Internet Service Providers and content providers have become unstoppable and restless in their objective to track and profile every user across the Internet.
The daily Internet activity, communications and behavior of every user are collected and sold to advertisers and basically anyone willing to buy them. Such transactions occur with little to no conscious consent from users and with a complete disregard and lack of respect for any notion of personal privacy.
However, in the actual context and the new blockchain-based economy model that rises, this system becomes irrelevant to many actors inside of it, and the time to change has come.
IPSX will provide the easiest way for users from all over the world to help the Internet in becoming a fully decentralized and free of the actual less fair interests of different actors, by sharing IPs in an easy and totally transparent way among worldwide users and providing the fuel of truly decentralization for the Internet.
What is IPSX?
іѕ one of thе first Intеrnеt Prоtосоl еxсhаngеs that соnnесtѕ dіffеrеnt асtоrѕ іn a network involving the peer-to-peer соnnесtіоn. It еnаblеѕ thе оwnеrѕ of thе dаtа сеntеrѕ аnd individuals tо rent their IPs tо оthеr uѕеrѕ who are willing to соmрlеtе tаѕkѕ thаt rеԛuіrе more thаn оnе IP address bypassing centralized providers and mаnу other rеѕtrісtіоnѕ such as рrорrіеtаrу ѕуѕtеmѕ fоr trаdіng and closed networks.
At the moment, IP аddrеѕѕеѕ represent a vаluаblе asset with a very low liquidity level. Meaning that the IP sharing market is only accessible to a few large players who understand it and its needs, and who also have the technical solutions to rent or share IPs.
Utilizing the advancement of the blockchain technology, IPSX allows everyone to take part into a multibillion industry while contribute to a decentralized economy and generate revenue in a safe and easy environment.
Thе IPSX project origins from GeoRanker, a Data Mining Platform focused on IP sharing and renting. The increasing demand of IPs from the GeoRanker platform clients combined with the emerging blockchain capabilities gave an impetus for the initial IPSX concept. Since July 2017, GeoRanker team composed by multiple blockchain early adopters and enthusiasts has developed the IPSX concept into a disruptive business model.
Relation to Blockchain
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Data Mining Enterprise Level Clients
Data mining on Big Data is what thousands of companies around the world are now doing. Their core activity is Data Acquisition, which is partially done through web scraping that required large volumes of IP addresses. Then collected data is converted into powerful insights about consumers and consumer behavior that is how the process of Data Mining runs.
IPSX addresses this specific need of the Data Mining industry and offers businesses the ability to rent large volumes of IP Addresses and plenty of usage options, such as IP addresses from different geolocation and competitive pricing.
By now, IPSX has already attracted a few data science companies as its clients. One such companies is that uses data to drive employee-positive actions and aims to improve HR services through data science and acquisition.
IPSX has successfully ended its public crowndsale on March 5, collecting approximately 8 million USD. Previously the company has stated that all funds raised during the investment period will be used solely for the development and benefit of the IPSX Ecosystem, and indeed the launch of a demo version of the platform (MVP) was recently announced.
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