Coinbase India Relaunch

[pawanjain]

Even if coinbase is allowing IMPS or UPI transfers, I would still refrain from using those. I have had multiple instances in the past where my account was frozen or at least the affected funds were locked for a really long time just because those were linked to cryptos somehow. I have stopped trusting our banks so even if coinbase has this feature, I would still not use it. As per I remember, majority of Indian platforms do offer fiat withdrawals and deposits. Even WazirX has INR deposit/withdrawals live now but the real question is - are people really trusting these conversions?

In past, times were really good. I remember cashing out bitcoins directly in my paytm wallet. That time, I didn't even do the basic KYC on paytm. Those were much easier times.

Yeah, those were indeed golden days back then but it was because of the same reason why it got restricted.
Since there was no KYC people were misusing it for their benefit and scammers were also having a really great time.
I guess sometimes, convenience comes at a cost and may be due to these KYC restrictions the scams would have decreased in number.

[eaLiTy]

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Found this from reddit community, so we are moving towards the same approach as other Indian exchanges? We will lose access to send/withdraw crypto if we enabled the INR deposits?

This is true, the website is really buggy when you are accessing it from India, and once the app was updated, the withdrawal option disappeared. Like every other crypto exchange in India, Coinbase also removed that option, which is really unfortunate. I have to check whether Binance has also removed the withdrawal option.

Looks like FIU wants to fuck with every possible option that users can get benefit and leave with no other option than holding the funds in the exchange?

Then who is responsible if the exchange got hacked?

We are paying 30% tax and in return we get nothing and even more we lose the basic privilege of holding our own crypto in our wallets.
This is true, I just check this option

The government is looking to squeeze all the benefits through higher taxes, once the exchange is hacked your funds are put on hold indefinitely. We need to find a way to hold the government responsible for forcing these exchanges to disable the withdrawal option.

[Bitcoin Smith]

Looks like FIU wants to fuck with every possible option that users can get benefit and leave with no other option than holding the funds in the exchange?

Then who is responsible if the exchange got hacked?

We are paying 30% tax and in return we get nothing and even more we lose the basic privilege of holding our own crypto in our wallets.
This is true, I just check this option

The government is looking to squeeze all the benefits through higher taxes, once the exchange is hacked your funds are put on hold indefinitely. We need to find a way to hold the government responsible for forcing these exchanges to disable the withdrawal option.

It is a mistake by the government, forcing the people to keep the funds in exchange is risk for the user's asset and also they are forcing the people to use the offshore exchanges which again results in the revenue loss to them. I honestly don't know what is their intention here, they can enforce other rules like what happened with Binance, so they can still track and the user can keep his crypto with them, that is a win win for both party.

[eaLiTy]

Looks like FIU wants to fuck with every possible option that users can get benefit and leave with no other option than holding the funds in the exchange?

Then who is responsible if the exchange got hacked?

We are paying 30% tax and in return we get nothing and even more we lose the basic privilege of holding our own crypto in our wallets.
This is true, I just check this option

The government is looking to squeeze all the benefits through higher taxes, once the exchange is hacked your funds are put on hold indefinitely. We need to find a way to hold the government responsible for forcing these exchanges to disable the withdrawal option.

It is a mistake by the government, forcing the people to keep the funds in exchange is risk for the user's asset and also they are forcing the people to use the offshore exchanges which again results in the revenue loss to them. I honestly don't know what is their intention here, they can enforce other rules like what happened with Binance, so they can still track and the user can keep his crypto with them, that is a win win for both party.

The government claims that it is impossible to track private wallets, even though all transactions are registered on a public blockchain. I have no idea why no one has filed a consumer petition against the government over these silly regulations. The logical solution is to allow users to withdraw to private wallets as long as they declare their private wallet addresses to the concerned authorities, rather than forcing them to hold their assets in exchange wallets.

[Bitcoin Smith]

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The government claims that it is impossible to track private wallets, even though all transactions are registered on a public blockchain. I have no idea why no one has filed a consumer petition against the government over these silly regulations. The logical solution is to allow users to withdraw to private wallets as long as they declare their private wallet addresses to the concerned authorities, rather than forcing them to hold their assets in exchange wallets.

I bet no one in a leadership position can have a clue about what is crypto, blockchain and other terms related to crypto are, and they simply act as a puppet for the RBI and the banking sector who doesn't want private currencies to roam into the economy. If we take this matter tot he supreme court then I am sure the users will get the favor in the judgment like what happened when RBI banned crypto trading and then court overturned the rule.

[pawanjain]

The government claims that it is impossible to track private wallets, even though all transactions are registered on a public blockchain. I have no idea why no one has filed a consumer petition against the government over these silly regulations. The logical solution is to allow users to withdraw to private wallets as long as they declare their private wallet addresses to the concerned authorities, rather than forcing them to hold their assets in exchange wallets.

Isn't this already happening ? I mean, we do have to declare the private wallet addresses on binance whenever we make deposit on the exchange.
So binance does have our private wallet addresses which they have linked to our identities based on our KYC data.
It becomes really easy to track private wallets this way. The government doesn't even have to do anything.

[eaLiTy]

~
I bet no one in a leadership position can have a clue about what is crypto, blockchain and other terms related to crypto are, and they simply act as a puppet for the RBI and the banking sector who doesn't want private currencies to roam into the economy. If we take this matter tot he supreme court then I am sure the users will get the favor in the judgment like what happened when RBI banned crypto trading and then court overturned the rule.

There is no way a politician will ever understand blockchain and its related concepts. Bureaucrats definitely understand it, which is why they launched the official Digital Rupee using blockchain.  Regarding the court intervention, unless there is a clear constitutional violation, the Supreme Court will not intervene.

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Isn't this already happening ? I mean, we do have to declare the private wallet addresses on binance whenever we make deposit on the exchange.
So binance does have our private wallet addresses which they have linked to our identities based on our KYC data.
It becomes really easy to track private wallets this way. The government doesn't even have to do anything.

It is true that we must declare the source of incoming and outgoing transactions. However, the problem with this declaration is that if we state a transaction is from a third party, it usually fails to process. Similarly, during withdrawals, selecting anything other than an exchange often blocks the transfer. Consequently, I usually select 'private wallet' even for exchange wallets, and the transaction goes through smoothly.

[Bitcoin Smith]

~ Regarding the court intervention, unless there is a clear constitutional violation, the Supreme Court will not intervene.

I am not a lawyer so I don't know the exact laws but not letting users to withdraw to a non-custodial wallet is preventing the citizens from accessing their property since the government legalized bitcoin as VDA, so some arguments can be made and any sensible judge will slash the non-written rule of FIA that pushes every exchange to disable crypto withdrawals.

The clear evidence is that Coinbase started with crypto withdrawals but in just a week, the feature was disabled.

[eaLiTy]

~ Regarding the court intervention, unless there is a clear constitutional violation, the Supreme Court will not intervene.

I am not a lawyer so I don't know the exact laws but not letting users to withdraw to a non-custodial wallet is preventing the citizens from accessing their property since the government legalized bitcoin as VDA, so some arguments can be made and any sensible judge will slash the non-written rule of FIA that pushes every exchange to disable crypto withdrawals.

The clear evidence is that Coinbase started with crypto withdrawals but in just a week, the feature was disabled.

The fact is that, it is a legal conundrum. The government is enforcing the exchanges with the PMLA trap. If someone withdraws crypto from their exchange and commits a crime, the exchanges will be held responsible. In order to avoid that, exchanges will have to follow this non withdrawal of crypto in order to avoid this legal trap.

So basically, they are not enforcing it directly. If someone goes to the court with a writ petition against an exchange, the court cannot do anything as they will deemed it as a private company and the state cannot enforce them to allow the withdrawal.

Recently, a customer went to the Delhi High Court regarding this same withdrawal issue against Bitbns exchange. The court dismissed the petition, stating that cryptocurrency exchanges are private entities and do not qualify as ‘State’ under constitutional law.

Source: Delhi High Court Refuses to Regulate Crypto Exchanges in India

In short, the government prefers regulatory strangulation over an outright ban.