Is India’s Anti- Crypto Stance Affecting Its Position In The Blockchain Race?

The crypto condition in India has been cryptic so far. Authorities have been towing the line back and forth and some have even gone as far as to call crypto ‘illegal‘ in the Asian country. So where does this leave India in the global scenario? Well as far as the blockchain domain is considered, India is nowhere close to the top 5 nations who are leading the industry.

The CEO of Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, Changpeng Zhao, has recently tweeted the following list of five countries that are leading in the Asian blockchain domain:

We now see Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong competing to be the blockchain hub in Asia. What do you think? I personally hope all of them success.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 1, 2018

The list does not feature India, neither does it feature its neighbour, China. Now is it a coincidence that the two countries who haven’t made the cut in the blockchain field, are also leaning towards the anti-crypto rhetoric in their respective countries? Well, I would not bet my money on it.

Despie China’s Central Bank having filed the most number of blockchain related patents in 2017, it has been left out of the list. India too has made efforts to integrate blockchain in various administrative sectors. The Indian State of Telangana had signed MoUs with various ventures to build the country’s first blockchain district.

However, it is becoming more and more apparent that if a country does not embrace crypto, it cannot make a lot of progress in the blockchain domain.

Leading crypto companies like Ripple, Coinbase, Stellar have Indians in some of the most high positions. Notably, about 20 Indians had recently raised a blockchain investment fund in United States, because India is still largely indecisive regarding regulations when it comes to crypto and blockchain.

This just goes to show how much talent we are losing out on due to the current regulatory climate in India, which is not conducive to crypto and blockchain startups. Blockchain is intricately related to cryptocurrencies since they started their journey together and go hand in hand.

It is therefore largely doubtful if India can flourish in the blockchain sector without embracing crytpocurrencies.