Foreign crypto exchanges in India face uncertain future
India banned crypto exchanges that didn’t comply with FIU guidelines, but market experts point to a lack of regulatory clarity and high taxation, forcing crypto traders to rush to foreign exchanges.
The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) — an agency of India’s Ministry of Finance that gathers financial intelligence about offenses under the country’s Prevention of Money Laundering Act — issued a notice of noncompliance to Binance, HTX, Kraken, Gate.io, KuCoin, Bitstamp, MEXC Global, Bittrex and Bitfinex for illegally operating in India on Dec. 28, 2023.
The notice gave the firms 12 days to comply with Indian Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.
Two weeks after the FIU notice, on Jan. 10, Apple’s App Store in India blocked the foreign crypto exchanges that received the FIU notice. Within a week, the crypto exchanges were unavailable on Google’s Play store, followed by a ban on the URLs and alternate URLs of the crypto platforms.
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