Indian bitcoin wallet and exchange platform Zebpay hits a notable milestone in seeing over 500,000 installs of its app-only service on Android as bitcoin gains popularity in India.Launched in 2015, Zebpay is among India’s leading bitcoin companies. The bitcoin firm sticks to an app-only model unlike its competitors in Unocoin and Coinsecure, comfortably and unsurprisingly beating them in app downloads. In early 2016, the bitcoin startup raised $1 million from local investors to promote bitcoin in a country of over a billion people.
Zebpay’s operating chief and co-founder Sandeep Goenka expects to scale aggressively in the coming months and aims to hit a million downloads by September this year. Further, he revealed that Zebpay is seeing more than 2,500 new customer sign-ups every day.
In quotes reported by a regional publication, Goenka stated:
India is at the cusp of a new financial revolution as Indian customers are opening up to non-traditional investment measures. While this [growth] is a steady and promising start, we expect the bitcoin trend to roar further. We aim to achieve 12 million downloads by end of September 2017.
India sees relatively modest trading volumes compared to other Asian markets bitcoin markets in China, South Korea and Japan. In February, the Reserve Bank of India – the country’s central bank and financial regulator – turned a cold shoulder toward bitcoin, neither banning nor legalizing it and certainly not regulating the industry.
“India’s bitcoin trading volumes are relatively small compared to other countries around the world,” stated Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of India’s largest bitcoin exchange Unocoin in a conversation with CCN in February this year. “So, it [regulation] may not be a priority, yet. First, the RBI will need to understand the bitcoin ecosystem before regulating it.”
Two months later, the Indian government stopped ignoring bitcoin.
After Bitcoin was discussed in the Indian Parliament repeatedly through March and early April, India’s Ministry for Finance established an inter-governmental committee to study the framework of virtual currencies.
While one particular politician called for bitcoin to be declared illegal in the country, it is increasingly likely that the cryptocurrency-gauging committee is set to recommend the Indian government legalize bitcoin.
In mid-April, a televised report by the Indian affiliate of CNBC pointed to the government looking at legalizing and taxing bitcoin in India. A report from earlier this month cited an unnamed Finance Ministry official underline the regulation of the bitcoin industry as a priority, further squashing any talk of banning the world’s most prominent and widely-used cryptocurrency.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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