2013-12-13 WSJ - India Catches Bitcoin Fever

[Cunningham]

India Catches Bitcoin Fever
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/12/12/bitcoin-fever-catches-on-in-india/

It has begun. 

[empoweoqwj]

India Catches Bitcoin Fever
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/12/12/bitcoin-fever-catches-on-in-india/

It has begun. 

Yep. Read the article. Yet more people with no more intent than inflating the speculative bubble

I prefer reading articles about people actually using bitcoin or developing services. Masses of people looking to get rich from "investing" in bitcoin scares the willies out of me.

[bryant.coleman]

Legal situation in India is very much vague right now. I have talked to some of the Indian Bitcoin sellers who are active in Localbitcoins. They told me that they are very much uncertain about the legal consequences of what they are doing. On the brighter side, no bank accounts have been frozen in India for indulging in Bitcoin trading.

[bryant.coleman]

But there are no indian exchanges?

There are some. I think the largest ones are rbitco.in and inrbtc.com.

But most of the trade is still routed through localbitcoins.com

[LiteCoinGuy]

every bubble will bring bitcoin further. but its astonishing that india is far away from a leader in bitcoin-trading (like China is today).

[kjlimo]

India Catches Bitcoin Fever
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/12/12/bitcoin-fever-catches-on-in-india/

It has begun. 

Yep. Read the article. Yet more people with no more intent than inflating the speculative bubble

I prefer reading articles about people actually using bitcoin or developing services. Masses of people looking to get rich from "investing" in bitcoin scares the willies out of me.

Agreed, lesss speculating, more doing!

[stompix]

India Catches Bitcoin Fever
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/12/12/bitcoin-fever-catches-on-in-india/

It has begun. 

I can see another China madness , with no actual demand other than speculation backing it up.
What's next , Brazil?

[manfred]

But there are no indian exchanges?

Yes there are:
https://buysellbitco.in/

[cr1776]

India Catches Bitcoin Fever
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/12/12/bitcoin-fever-catches-on-in-india/

It has begun. 

I can see another China madness , with no actual demand other than speculation backing it up.
What's next , Brazil?

While I agree that China and some other countries have non transactional demand for bitcoin, I think it is easy to underestimate the other uses.

Any country with currency controls can use bitcoin for non-speculative demand to avoid said controls. (And that is many countries.). Likewise any country with any non trivial rate of inflation can use bitcoin as protection from it. And this too is many countries. 

Protection of wealth either by removing it from the jurisdiction via bitcoin or by merely converting it is an important use case. :-)