‘Coinbase Claims Are Incorrect and Misleading,’ Says Experts

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not targeted crypto exchanges, says unnamed sources. This is in response to the statements made by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Earlier this week, Armstrong said that the exchange’s abrupt halt in India was due to  “informal pressure” from the RBI.

Armstrong has been strongly condemning the RBI over the past few weeks. Earlier, he even posted on Twitter asking if their “shadow ban” violated the supreme court ruling.

“The RBI has not done anything or issued any instruction which goes against the Supreme Court order,” a subject-matter expert informed the Economic Times. The source also added that statements coming from the CEO were “incorrect and misleading.”

The RBI in its circular dated May 31, 2021, had stated that in view of the order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, the circular of April 6, 2018, which had imposed certain restrictions on regulated entities in dealing with virtual currencies, is no longer valid from the date of the Supreme Court judgment.

Notably, Coinbase started crypto trading in India on April 7, 2022. At the time of the launch, Armstrong had announced that Indian users would be able to conduct transactions on its platform using UPI. UPI is a payments interface created by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

However, the NPCI later denied this, stating that it was not aware of any crypto exchanges using UPI. Eventually, Coinbase was forced to disable UPI as a payment method.

All these negative developments coupled with India’s aggressive taxation are expected to severely mar the adoption of crypto in India.