Coinbase India Relaunch

[pawanjain]

Coinbase has started it's operations in India this time with INR support. Something that we have been waiting for quite a while now.
Users will have to go through full KYC procedure though and that's something that not many will encourage.
Yet, those who comply, will get a fully established reputed exchange allowing direct IMPS transfers for deposit and withdrawals.
They will also have INR pairs with cryptocurrencies just like how other Indian exchanges have.
It will be interesting to see how the Indian banks and RBI will take this as we all know they are not a fan of crypto exchanges.

[Bitcoin Smith]

~
It will be interesting to see how the Indian banks and RBI will take this as we all know they are not a fan of crypto exchanges.

Coinbase must be complied to everything that FIU asked for that is why they get the nod for the relaunch and it must be good news for the p2p traders and okay with paying 30% tax, because we have a few indian exchanges that have direct INR support but got mostly negative feedback with the delays and pending deposits, which will not happen with Coinbase.

I also saw the article on Cointelegraph, but we don't know yet about the catches in their system. Usually, if an exchange supports direct INR support then the withdrawal of crypto will be disabled.

[Cointikka]

It is good to hear that Coinbase is coming back to India, but there will be a catch. I agree that complete KYC will be mandatory, but the pairing in INR and INR withdrawal will have a catch. The RBI has many times in the past asked the central government to ban crypto and has always created issues with bank deposits and withdrawals. This time, there might be some catch or some kind of negotiation that Coinbase might have had with the government. I hope this time they stay here for long as India has one of the biggest crypto community in the world.

[pawanjain]

~
It will be interesting to see how the Indian banks and RBI will take this as we all know they are not a fan of crypto exchanges.

Coinbase must be complied to everything that FIU asked for that is why they get the nod for the relaunch and it must be good news for the p2p traders and okay with paying 30% tax, because we have a few indian exchanges that have direct INR support but got mostly negative feedback with the delays and pending deposits, which will not happen with Coinbase.

I also saw the article on Cointelegraph, but we don't know yet about the catches in their system. Usually, if an exchange supports direct INR support then the withdrawal of crypto will be disabled.

Yeah that's there for sure. FIU compliance is absolutely necessary to operate in India and so Coinbase would have definitely went through that.
It will be a good option for those people who are no hesitant to undergo KYC procedure and pay tax on their crypto profits.
Currently, Coinbase does allow crypto withdrawals in other countries and so I guess it will be the same for India as well.

I hope this time they stay here for long as India has one of the biggest crypto community in the world.

Coinbase is just too big to fail and with a huge crypto userbase like India I don't think it will quit any time soon.

[Bitcoin Smith]

~ Coinbase does allow crypto withdrawals in other countries and so I guess it will be the same for India as well.

The thing is FIU or our government doesn't really like the crypto to exists in our country and in fact they don't even want the people to have gold or something that gives them some kind of power. So they just made the life of every crypto user as hell, they can opt in for the crypto withdrawals but INR support will not be available and if they decide to use bank account transfer then crypto withdrawals will be disabled. So we can chose either this or that.

Coinbase is just too big to fail and with a huge crypto userbase like India I don't think it will quit any time soon.

Yep, they waited for things to align and don't want to make any mistakes that is why they took their time when Binance and others were okay with accepting the penalty and get FIU compliance as soon as possible.

[Cointikka]

Yep, they waited for things to align and don't want to make any mistakes that is why they took their time when Binance and others were okay with accepting the penalty and get FIU compliance as soon as possible.

The Indian government has not been friendly to crypto-related businesses. The local exchanges are struggling to stay afloat, and the international exchanges have lost a lot of their customer base after the Indian government introduced FIU compliance. I know crypto can be a security threat for India, but these threats were existing when fiat was present. I think they will first check the Indian market after their launch and then they will decide how long or how will they stay here.

[pawanjain]

The thing is FIU or our government doesn't really like the crypto to exists in our country and in fact they don't even want the people to have gold or something that gives them some kind of power.

If that were so then the government of India would not have let people hold on to so much of Gold and would have imposed heavy taxes on Gold too.
I believe that the reason the Indian government is not crypto friendly is because they cannot control cryptocurrencies directly while in case of Gold, they can.

[eaLiTy]

Coinbase has started it's operations in India this time with INR support.

Coinbase is yet to start INR trading.

~
If that were so then the government of India would not have let people hold on to so much of Gold and would have imposed heavy taxes on Gold too.
I believe that the reason the Indian government is not crypto friendly is because they cannot control cryptocurrencies directly while in case of Gold, they can.

There was a time when the government banned the holding of gold bars and coins and limits were implemented on how much gold you could have. Like with any banned items, the black market thrived, and the government understood its mistake and regulated gold instead.

The government is applying the same approach to the cryptocurrency market, they do not want to outright ban and repeat the same mistake. Hence, they have chosen to impose heavy taxes to maintain control over the market.

[pawanjain]

~
If that were so then the government of India would not have let people hold on to so much of Gold and would have imposed heavy taxes on Gold too.
I believe that the reason the Indian government is not crypto friendly is because they cannot control cryptocurrencies directly while in case of Gold, they can.

There was a time when the government banned the holding of gold bars and coins and limits were implemented on how much gold you could have. Like with any banned items, the black market thrived, and the government understood its mistake and regulated gold instead.

The government is applying the same approach to the cryptocurrency market, they do not want to outright ban and repeat the same mistake. Hence, they have chosen to impose heavy taxes to maintain control over the market.
[/quote]

Makes sense. For the time being, there are not much options left for us.
We can either pay huge tax on our crypto profits if not use P2P methods for taking out profits, which is again risky and not encouraged.
The last option is to keep on holding to our coins until there is crypto friendly taxation system that gets created.

[Nrcewker]

It will be interesting to see how the Indian banks and RBI will take this as we all know they are not a fan of crypto exchanges.

Nothing will happen; just pay the 30% tax, and everything will be alright. Though Coinbase’s comeback will be beneficial for newbie traders, people like me will still stick to P2P. We know how hard we have worked to earn profits in crypto, and the government is simply taking a straight 30% from it.

Coinbase is yet to start INR trading.

I was browsing Coinbase’s blog and found this article: https://www.coinbase.com/en-in/blog/coinbase-launches-in-india-with-direct-inr-rails. It says they are officially in India and have started their operations. The post is from May 31, so I am sure everything has progressed by now, and Coinbase should be able to support each and every transaction from India.

[eaLiTy]

~
I was browsing Coinbase’s blog and found this article: https://www.coinbase.com/en-in/blog/coinbase-launches-in-india-with-direct-inr-rails. It says they are officially in India and have started their operations. The post is from May 31, so I am sure everything has progressed by now, and Coinbase should be able to support each and every transaction from India.

I just posted a screenshot of the contents from my Coinbase dashboard in the above post. The screenshot was taken minutes before posting it here and it clearly says INR trade is coming soon. 

Before posting this, I checked my dashboard once again and confirmed that it is possible to deposit and withdraw INR on coinbase. Yesterday, there was no such options. Historically Coinbase is not known to do things immediately right from its inception.  . They might be rolling out this option to existing customers in batches. 🐪🐪

[Bitcoin Smith]

~
Before posting this, I checked my dashboard once again and confirmed that it is possible to deposit and withdraw INR on coinbase. Yesterday, there was no such options. Historically Coinbase is not known to do things immediately right from its inception.  . They might be rolling out this option to existing customers in batches. 🐪🐪

Again, this is great. IMPS will simply do the job just fine and making a deposit only from your own bank account also makes sense. What about withdrawal? DId you see any tab or only the deposit page?

And this might be rolled out recently, because I kept looking for the feedbacks on reddit and other sources and no one posted about trading INR in coinbase yet, so you are one of the very few got this feature.

[Cointikka]

Again, this is great. IMPS will simply do the job just fine and making a deposit only from your own bank account also makes sense. What about withdrawal? DId you see any tab or only the deposit page?

And this might be rolled out recently, because I kept looking for the feedbacks on reddit and other sources and no one posted about trading INR in coinbase yet, so you are one of the very few got this feature.

Why are they avoiding UPI? It is much easier than using IMPS, where a user needs to log in to the bank website. With UPI, the user can deposit using a mobile phone and does not need to log in to the bank website. I hate it when these companies that have invested heavily in their exchanges do not think about the customer first but think about the regulatory authority first.

[pawanjain]

Again, this is great. IMPS will simply do the job just fine and making a deposit only from your own bank account also makes sense. What about withdrawal? DId you see any tab or only the deposit page?

And this might be rolled out recently, because I kept looking for the feedbacks on reddit and other sources and no one posted about trading INR in coinbase yet, so you are one of the very few got this feature.

Why are they avoiding UPI? It is much easier than using IMPS, where a user needs to log in to the bank website. With UPI, the user can deposit using a mobile phone and does not need to log in to the bank website. I hate it when these companies that have invested heavily in their exchanges do not think about the customer first but think about the regulatory authority first.

That's a very valid and interesting question and after a little digging I got to know the below.

UPI comes under NPCI and is closely tied to RBI policies and so it often receives push back when any crypto exchange tries to implement this payment system.
IMPS falls under the banks since its a inter bank transfer system and so it is often the preferred choice for crypto exchanges.

Further more, UPI transactions have a lower transfer limit and so IMPS again wins the race in this case.
Lastly, IMPS transactions are easier to track in case of any dispute while tracing UPI transactions is not that straight forward.
So for these reasons, crypto exchanges prefer IMPS over UPI transactions.

[Cointikka]

That's a very valid and interesting question and after a little digging I got to know the below.

UPI comes under NPCI and is closely tied to RBI policies and so it often receives push back when any crypto exchange tries to implement this payment system.
IMPS falls under the banks since its a inter bank transfer system and so it is often the preferred choice for crypto exchanges.

Further more, UPI transactions have a lower transfer limit and so IMPS again wins the race in this case.
Lastly, IMPS transactions are easier to track in case of any dispute while tracing UPI transactions is not that straight forward.
So for these reasons, crypto exchanges prefer IMPS over UPI transactions.

Here are my two cents on your response. UPI daily limit is INR 1 Lakh, IMPS 5 Lakh. A difference of 4 Lakh only affects a trader, whereas it does not affect an investor. As an Indian, you would know that we have an upbringing to stay away in high risk investment. Crypto is a high-risk investment, which is why people do not invest more than a Lakh. 

BTW.. NPCI's core structure is based on a public-private partnership model. It is not a government entity. The Private partnership is owned by banks, whereas it was established by the RBI in 2008. It is the source of these [UPI, RuPay, and IMPS] digital payment systems in India. If IMPS is included, then why not UPI? 

[Bitcoin Smith]

~

BTW.. NPCI's core structure is based on a public-private partnership model. It is not a government entity. The Private partnership is owned by banks, whereas it was established by the RBI in 2008. It is the source of these [UPI, RuPay, and IMPS] digital payment systems in India. If IMPS is included, then why not UPI? 

I don't know the exact reason but my assumption is that due to the regulatory issues again, the merchant or some kind of thing that the RBI has. Back in the day, I used Wazirx they also preferred IMPS only, and they enabled NEFT/RTGS for bigger withdrawals/deposits. Exchanges would like to have every possible payment mode, so I doubt they are not the problem here but banking related restriction might stall them for now.