Bitcoin Forum

Exploding demand, high premium

    "Zebpay, one of India’s Bitcoin exchanges, has over 500,000 downloads of its mobile app and is adding about 2,500 new users every day."

The scarcity of Bitcoins in India has resulted in Bitcoin being traded at a significant premium. The Bitcoin price in India touched INR 225,000 (~$3,500) before declining slightly. International users cannot arbitrage the demand for Bitcoins in India due to capital controls and foreign exchange regulations.
Exchanges overwhelmed

So how are exchanges coping with this overwhelming demand?

Zebpay urged investors to be cautious while buying Bitcoins, citing the high volatility

Zebpay tweeted “Bitcoin prices are very volatile right now. Please use caution when investing. This is a new technology innovation on a global but early stage. Your investment should match your knowledge. Be safe!”

However, this didn’t have the intended effect on Bitcoin investors. Zebpay later introduced a daily limit of INR 50,000 (~$780) on Bitcoin purchases.

Zebpay tweeted:

    “Dear user, we have put temporary buy limits of Rs 50,000 per day due to the shortage of Bitcoin stocks. These limits are temporary and will be revised as market conditions change.”

The situation was no different at other Bitcoin exchanges. Coinsecure, one of India’s leading exchanges was down, citing the exponential growth of users causing stress on the Company’s systems. The company expects the downtime to continue over the next few days. Visitors to the website were greeted with the following message.

Letter

500,000 downloads in a country of a billion people, umm that's .05% of the population. I'm not saying Bitcoin isn't getting more interest but let's go easy on the 'explode' shall we.

500,000 regular new users would be quite impressive though in such a short period of time of course none the less.

I really want to understand the basis for the massive amount in buying as I have a feeling that most of those buying are doing if out of ignorance because I have not read anywhere India has adopted bitcoin as people there will believe  its a get rich quick scheme they force the price so high and the moment they realise they are not getting what they bargained for, they dump which will end up affecting the mentality of other users around the world.

I wonder how many Bitcoins will be gone forever with the amount of Accidents & Deaths in India each day, anyone could be holding for life.... at least it increases value just like satoshi's untouched 1 Million BTC :D

But the growth is not so much high compared to the current population India has now. Also, all these 2500 people may not be buying directly bitcoins because of a current high market price. Number downloads will not tell us the growth but how much bitcoin they turnover every day will give us the more accurate data. Unless government regulate bitcoins, the bitcoin growth in India will not go high.

The extremely high price in inda directly shows that these people are actually buying.

If this was not the case, the price would not be that much higher as in other countries.

not to mention it is only the number of users using their mobile APP. and it is worth mentioning not everyone has a smart phone and not everyone who has a smart phone is installing Zebpay's mobile app on their phone.

the adoption of bitcoin in India has been growing for a while now, and majority of the buys are happening off the counter and mostly on localbitcoins with cash payments since their government was talking a little against bitcoin for a while.

also i don't get why this is posted in an altcoin board :)

i think its because people from india is receive something new including technology and i think this is why if the technologies in india is growing so fast. and i think its natural if we are see that bitcoin demand in india is really high, because the people in that country really want to make money from free source and they are willing to hard work and smart work.

Ya we'll for starters this is the Altcoin section and if I wasn't lazy I'd report it.
Seen it last night and was surprised it wasn't moved already..

I seen them flood XDA forums and it wasn't good.
It's like being overrun by 5 yr olds.

Where the fuck have they been for 8 years?
Oh yeah.. They weren't born yet LOL

And in case it wasn't obvious.. This topic highlights my point.
Crap.. Posted in the wrong section.

Wow this is really a great new. India has such a huge population, even one potential user out of a thousand people would be a large number.

That is one of the reason why bitcoin is increasing because of it's scarcity and in 10 years time bitcoin could become scarce anyway bitcoin is transferable I'm sure those people who will die will have a written documents about their bitcoin private and password,because like gold and cash it can be considered an asset for holder's heir.

2500 for India is little. I do believe that India will push crypto on totally new level. But that will happen with totally different numbers then 2500 new users daily. It is a start yes. For years this forum was full of posts about China. But India is where the real breakout will happen.

There's no like button in forum but I like this post, and we should not underestimate the indian people because I think they are smart and a lot of them work remotely for the rest of the world especially U.S.

I think that India can push the bitcoin price further and it's quite interesting how the bitcoin price reached $3.5k there.

500k active users i think is a lot comparing to the overall India population which is around 1.4 billion people.

How long until we have conspiracies about India ?
We all heard all kinds of shit about China + crypto..

India can legalize Bitcoin in the near future, as feedback from citizens and companies seems to support the regulation of digital currencies.
Government of India asks the public about regulation.
The online comment section, which has been running for 10 days, has received almost 4,000 submissions since it was released on May 21.
The areas researched are: whether digital coins should be banned, regulated or observed. If they are regulated then what measures should be taken to ensure consumer protection, promote development and also which institution should monitor and regulate them?
He also asked what would be the effective self-regulation mechanisms and the methods that should be adopted to ensure consumer protection in these scenarios.

That can happen anytime since we will all die anyway but I don't think this factor alone can significantly affect Bitcoin. However, I find it a little bit funny reading your reply here because of all things you can think of it is death you zero in. But as what I said it is quite legit and realistic.

As for India, the market here is huge and once the current government can finally laid down the template for recognizing Bitcoin especially for taxation and consumer protection purposes, this market can really explode like a volcano primarily because of its population. Combining China and India can mean something so huge for Bitcoin.

Yes, the demand for bitcoin is increasing slowly as more and more people are getting aware of this technology with its increasing price. You can find many users online using bitcoins, but it is hard to find bitcoiners in the locality.
Even a school has started accepting bitcoin as a mode of donation^[1] . Though I still look forward to see some big stores accepting bitcoins, bitcoin atm's, etc. I don't know if any of the physical stores have started using it. Long way to go!

[1]:http://www.indiabitcoin.com/bitcoin-for-education-indian-mountain-school-accepts-bitcoin-donations-cointelegraph/

You are correct to some extent, yes it's true that compared the overall population 500,000 downloads is nothing. But just consider this out the whole population only a fraction of it is privileged enough to even think about Bitcoin in India, so considering that this is a good adoption rate of bitcoin in India.

So the whole China will make bitcoin great again mirage is gone let's search for another El Dorado.
India...

Yeah 500 000 downloads. The number doesn't mean shift.
Let's see the number of users.
And after the number of users let's see the numbers of poeple buying.
And .. yeah it's getting funny after all this let's see how much in terms of BTC they have bought.

You can have 100 000 buyers but if they all come to 5$ in their pocket, I would prefer 10 guys with 1 million to spare.

Show me the trading volume, not inflated stories.
We know hoe the Chinese volume and usage was faked for years.

I'm not going to stay and listen to the same story about every damn country on this planet.


Story from FEB 04, 2015

Old story, uh?

How are things going today?

I think lots happened since them with new regulations being proposed and all the stuff?

Wow, when last did you hear a company saying.... STOP STOP, our systems cannot handle the traffic to our site and we have to apply limits to

slow down the sales, because we running out of stock.  ::) We are not going to allow international trades, so you just have to buy what we can

supply.  :o ....Oh well, let's appreciate the fact that they are allowing this to happen in India now.  ;)

Wow 500,000 new regular users is such a blast! I mean, with that demand, the price also would explode, because if the demand is high, the price would rise too. And it's good to see that at least there are more and more people trying to explore thr world of bitcoin. Such a good news tho.

This is just a small percentage and not making a dent of the huge population on India. Plus I believed that a lot of our Indian brothers are already into bitcoin and this news is nothing really new. And there are still a civil war regarding the legality of bitcoin usage in their, Indian's parliament is against bitcoin, because they believed is in used in Ponzi and a lot of illegal ways. So we still have to wait what will be the decision is before we can really say that bitcoin will really "explode" in India.

India was always good field for Bitcoins, let's say so, and there are always been many people interested in Bitcoins so this is actualy nothing new. And I beleive similar situation is in many big and poor countries because people often see Bitcoin as way out from poverty although we have witnessed many users from India involved in scam scheems.

We could see that already indians are late to bitcoin world when compared to chinese.China being dominant in bitcoin mining and india,neighbour country of china has almost 95% of whole population who don't even know about bitcoin.But now day to day progress in india is good to see and definitely it would help for the bitcoin progress.So,we could surely expect another spike in prices soon.

I don't think that India is late with regards to bitcoin involvement. I think the problems lies with their government having a crackdown on bitcoin user there. Remember, India has demonetized because they want to clean their money system. So I believed that a lot of Indians has turned to bitcoin to store their money. Its that how the government has been acting against the used of bitcoin in their country.

India will soon have even more impact on bitcoin economy - Reserve Bank of India and Ministry of Finance is 'Watching and learning about the development of Bitcoin".
Next year bitcoin might be fully legalized asset in India as it is 2nd most populated country in the world - it will open huge market for bitcoin.


More info: https://news.bitcoin.com/indias-government-may-be-preparing-to-legalize-and-regulate-bitcoin/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/indias-government-may-be-preparing-to-legalize-and-regulate-bitcoin/)

The shadow (grey) economy is huge in India, and here Bitcoin can become quite useful. Even during the recent demonetization exercise, a lot of people were showing interest in Bitcoin and the other crypto-currencies. And now with the tax authorities cracking down on real estate and bullion sectors, people are running out of options to store their unaccounted money. Bitcoin is one of the few remaining options.

Hey, every country has to start somewhere. I'd say this is a pretty decent start. If bitcoin can flourish, I'm highly optimistic about the prospects given India's population.

Yeah this is good and we must appreciate it that in India the Bitcoin is doing well. The demand of the Bitcoin in India is increasing and the basic reason for this growing demand is that the Information Technology in India is on its boom. Also sooner or later but the Indian government is thinking upon to legalize the Bitcoin in India and for this reason they have started working on it as well.

India is a potentially huge market for bitcoins, considering the population as well as the technical orientation and mentality allot of Indians have, it can be a very good place for BTC, even the issue with the government can probably be solved since BTC is much more open and decentralized than PayPal, even a ban won't work.

India is already a huge market for bitcoin. However the actual percentage of people that actually uses bitcoin compared to the entire population is absolutely miniscule and can be ignored.

Just like China India is a big market because the population is big and there is a lot internet marketers. There is a lot of people that is using bitcoin to avoid capital redtrictions and not a lot of people actually use bitcoin to trade for physical goods etc.

Hopefully this can be changed though.

The issue with India is the government, they did ban even PayPal from allowing in and out transactions, so now, after the grow interested and understand bitcoin, the possibility of making it illegal exist as they wouldn't be able to ban in/out transactions like PayPal with bitcoin having no central authority.

this thread is like throwing darts backwards in the dark and hoping to hit a bullseye.

sudden spurt of interest in bitcoin in india was due to demonetization of cash notes. alot of india's economy operates on cash (undeclared & untaxed) income. all these business, corrupt politicians, real estate moguls, industrialists, corrupt policemen, etc who were hoarding cash (in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes - the highest denomination at the time), got a big jolt in Nov 2016 when the Govt declared Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 bank notes as illegal. Citizens of India had 45 days to exchange their old notes for new currency through their banks with restrictions imposed. Corrupt bank managers were ofcourse changing old notes for new at a premium, and several were caught. In the midst of this nation wide crisis of where to store money, Bitcoin appeared as an option.

I think i have summed it up quite well there :)

generally, bitcoin is still far from being adopted by even the 'early adopters', in India. interest is growing daily though..

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/trend-tracking/startups-banking-on-bitcoins/articleshow/59083430.cms (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/trend-tracking/startups-banking-on-bitcoins/articleshow/59083430.cms)

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/interview-our-bitcoin-turnover-is-over-rs-500-crore-sandeep-goenka-2286435 (http://www.dnaindia.com/money/interview-our-bitcoin-turnover-is-over-rs-500-crore-sandeep-goenka-2286435)

Indeed Zebpay has grown alot quicker than we ever thought of. It is offering more higher prices as than LBC to its users and also the app made it very simple to manage it conveniently.

As far as I heard from my India friends, Bitcoin is grossly over hyped out there, one reason was the November 8th event and the government has decided to take a call on this very soon. So for Indians holding coins in exchanges I would suggest you to move out your coins to wallets that give you a private key, that way you shall be safe. Also Bitcoin has been playing very speculative out there which I feel is not all healthy for the growth of Bitcoins and it's users

Bitcoin demand was there in India since 2013, around this time RBI took a stand against it, but the note ban just increased the demand. The way government is handling things, it looks like they are going to go too hard on regulation. About a week ago bitcoin was dissed as a currency used for money laundering and illegal activites by a couple of ministers in the parliament with the statement that the regulation process would go hand in hand with cracking down illegal activites involving ponzi/pyramid schemes. Based on all these a report would be submitted by the end of July and then the government would decide if bitcoin needs to be regulated or not. The whole process would take at least more than a year.

Most Indian bitcoin users are just in for the speculation. Even with a 30% premium, Zebpay was breaking all volumes. Unocoin has partnered with a handful of merchants, but there are no major stores accepting bitcoins in India.

Yes there are some valid reasons for the Indian people that made the situation more favourable in India as compare to any other country.

If we look at the Indian population we will find extreme rich and extremely poor people in India. For the rich people the Bitcoin is an opportunity for to increase their net wealth and for the poor it is an opportunity to come over and with the earnings from the BTC they can live their lives in a bit ease.

It is true that it can help people who are not well-of but not to those extremely poor actually like very poor to afford to buy a gadget or somewhat and internet to enable them to use and earn thru Bitcoin. Still it doesn't change the fact that by Bitcoin we can promote a financial stability and stand as a way to earn an extra income since it is convenient and will not take a huge effort and time that will affect their work in real life.

I agree, but that was before the committee was set-up by RBI.
At the moment, the committee is looking into regulations related to Bitcoin and they probably will announce their decision soon. (It's looking positive, though.)


The 30% premium sucks, not sure why people are willing to pay this much. :/
Major stores cannot accept Bitcoin even if they wanted to, at the moment. (Because of the legality).

I cannot understand how the value in India are close to $3,500 whereas its a lot less in international market. Why would people buy at such high value? Can't they buy at an international exchange?

All those people that are using Bitcoin seems like a huge amount though how many of them actually plan on holding Bitcoin for multiple years? Holding Bitcoin will increase the price of Bitcoin, just using Bitcoin in  HYIP type websites won't do much for Bitcoin other than slow down the transaction speed through Blocklchain.

Most people can't, because International cards or wire transfers are required to be made.
For those of us who can, it's a great arbitrage opportunity.

Great, I think it's even better setting up an offshore exchange and have them deposited their funds in an account in India so that we will buy for less here and have it transferred to them so that we profit from the margins of the different market prices. I used arbitrage in gambling but I think it will suite this current trend in India.

because they can't buy on another exchange, they have restrition, or it will cost them many money to do a wire transfer, or mayeb their bank are not operative for other country, it make sense for them to buy locally and $3500 is not that higher than the current value, they know will rise more

It is (at least for me) quite scary how volatile it's becoming bitcoin  :o. Now with this news I have the feeling that it's gonna become more volatile. Read about cold storage... It will help!

I think this would be illegal at worst, and questionable at best.
Moreover, moving money out of India is not that easy through Banking channels.

I think the demand for bitcoin in india is very much ... but maybe in karnakan the unstable economy in India is a crisis ... India is more investing in forex because forex more quickly enter in india than bitcoin ... but surely very much Bitcoin enthusiasts in india after the crisis in india ended ... Thanks

The real question is how many of them are actually buying and how many invest more than 10$.
500 000 users and 25 000 new users a day would only require  each one of them to buy 0.1 btc to offset the ratio of the sell/buy volume on finex/stamp/btc  during the drop one week ago.

I arbitrage can be apply in India trading platforms because of the high premium it gives. But the problem arises if those using arbitrage can withdraw their money in those Indian Exchangers. Or they require more documents to verify your account?

This is interesting. Quite an overwhelming demand truly but why the sudden rush? I see this kinda development causing great upsurge in the price of bitcoin. Maybe I am just the only one thinking this, but isn't this purchase rate alarming? Hope it is just an attempt to invest or probably there is something some of us do not know?

25000 new users a day would be insane when it comes to how most of these countries would grow and it is beyond doubtful that there would be numbers anywhere close to something like that, if you want a daily growth average, composed of users who are actually buying Bitcoin as opposed to just using it.

I think we maybe have that total amount daily, globally. Not a constant influx of buying users.

The price hasnt got less in India as far as my friends are telling, people thought the price is gonna fall and will be great opportunity to invest in BTC. Zebpay is using this situation for themselves, the price is around 2850$+ now and it holding that place from 2 days now.

You forgot to mention one more highest downloaded and widely used wallet unocoin which also having huge trading per day I don't have exact calculation but this exchange also doing good

I have heard that Forex trading is very popular in India, despite its risks. Perhaps Bitcoin can also attract a nice user-base, since crypto-coin trading is also similar to Forex trading. It can also bring huge amounts of profits in relatively short time period. But the legal status of Bitcoin in India is still unclear, along with its tax implications.

It is not a sudden rush,the prices in Indian exchanges were always higher than the normal market and after the demonetization the price parity increased and if the increase in price we are seeing more people coming into Indian exchanges which forced them to upgrade their network to accommodate the users.

It is relative, when you consider the whole population of India, it seems the new interest in bitcoin to be very small, but if the community of people in India using bitcoin was small then this may be in fact a huge growth and to say it is an explosion is in fact the correct term.

All Indian exchangers have strict KYC requirements and require an Indian bank account to transfer the fiat to.


Yes, the price of 1 BTC here is still around $2840.

From what you and others are telling Zebpay is fleecing your compatriots bigtime.
Paying an extra 300$ at the moment of writing this or around 15% premium for buying btc is nonsense.

Why would you even do it?
There are so many ways in which you can get bitcoins I don't understand people that go and buy at this price or people that use atms and their sky high fees.

http://i67.tinypic.com/9qjvyw.png

According to ARK blockchain, India has contributed to 10 percent of global monthly BTC/USD trades.

Since the government is planning to regulate bitcoin, India's biggest bank SBI has taken the initiative to implement blockchain technology with the bankchain project. SBI has partnered with all the major banks to enable sharing of KYC, ALM and CFT details through permissioned blockchain. The main purpose is to prevent anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism, and to reduce fraudulent loans where a borrower takes a loan against the same asset from multiple banks.

With over 500,000 downloads Zebpay has become the 7th most popular app in India in finance category.

No never in my dreams will I pay for anynof that.  Like what you said, there were many ways to earn bitcoin to have an income with it.  Why bother doing things that will make you give your bitcoins.  We cannot blame people who are buying bitcoins right now.  They have money plus they are new into it.  They maybe glad and want to invest in it.

There is no doubt bitcoin demand is really increasing in india and many people are ready to pay 40% more than the current value. First i didn't understand why so much demand but when i had gone to india for working purpose is saw some local channel in the hotel telling the reason for this demand is because people wanted to hide their money which they got from illegal work and they were using bitcoin to convert their black money to white.
They did say the government is going to do something about this but i totally doubt that there is any solution to this issue.

They do not know better but you must remember these kind of things happens when there is a mania remember the Tulip mania back in the day, something similar happened, so this is nothing more than history once again repeating itself and humans are unable to see it.

Ok, I'm not color blind cause I can see the blue in the details but in the main picture I can't see any , and it should be more than black in that graph.

So where is that graph from?

LE.
Just a bit of digging and look what we find out.
That the graph is a total fake.

It is taken from here:
https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/analysis/USD?type=Currencies&period=1M

And surprise surprise the author just changed KRW with INR.
Another proof that the whole India boom is a fake.

https://s1.postimg.org/bbd2yo2q7/Sp_E2.png

Mate, try using the dropdown on the right of the chart and select INR.



Boom in India is definitely NOT fake. Our government is planning to legalize Bitcoin within the next 6 months.

Ref: https://cointelegraph.com/news/suddenly-bitcoin-to-be-officially-legal-in-india

Now that's the catch my friend... mostof the people in india just buy bitcoins with a single motive of selling it at ery high prices to earn prfit and to be rich quickly.. Such fools most of the time keep hold on their coins..disrupting the indian market bitcoin liquidity. I have seen people buy bitcoins when it broke all ATH'S $2900 and then after selling at low prices like $2600 ..because they panic a lot and want short terms huge profits..These fools aren't gonna become rich so easily , the way they think it to be

India is one of the countries that has a considerable human population.
With the inclusion of bitcoin k india can certainly add to the wealth of bitcoin itself, ..
The good news is, we can afford without fear of drastic price decline.

500000 user a day is huge number.India is bilion people country but most of India is agriculture.That India middle class is relativelly small.On other hands India has many people advanced and working IT industry
Propably wil be similar story like it was in China

That's a good news for the bitcoin community that Indians are showing more and more interest in bitcoin. It will certainly increase the market cap of bitcoin which will increase the price of bitcoin. So it is a win win situation for all. However, I'm not sure about Zebpay's service and related fees.

I have used localbitcoin website for a few time and I am very happy with them. The rates are good and also the built in escrow feature make it attractive to the bitcoin community.

Probably but there is a big difference, in India there is not a government like the one in China so I suppose they have a greater degree of freedom, so the options here could help adoption or hinder it since they are not looking to protect themselves as badly as the Chinese from their own government.

As far as I know, they are just charging the Indian market rates. I checked the Localbitcoins India section. Right now, the best offer is at ₹179,000 per coin (around $2,780 per coin), which is at least 10% higher than the exchange rates denominated in USD or EUR.

I am too expecting that in India the spread and adoption of Bitcoin (and other digital currencies for that matter) can be better compared to that of China. People are currently enjoying a more lax government and people have more freedom as it is also a democratic country. While it is having some perennial economic issues, there is no question it is also a powerhouse in Asia.

With its vast population and a burgeoning hi-tech industries (BPO is one of its main players), I am so sure that the market can be so big (even if middle class section in terms of percentage to the general population may not be enormous).

India can be the big good news that Bitcoin has been looking for this past few days as it experienced a continuing bloodbath together with almost all alternative coins...all of them are swimming in a sea of red tide. Hopefully, Bitcoin as well as Ethereum can be back in track again this time...preceding the planned August One event.