Welcome back,
Recently, a lot of people started to panic when the FIU, the Financial Intelligence Unit of India, issued a notice to 25 offshore crypto exchanges for breaking the anti-money laundering law. Generally, they are not involved in any sort of bad activities, but the FIU wants them to comply with the laws that other exchanges are following. Recently, Binance, Kucoin, and some other big exchanges agreed with FIU and complied with the regulations.
So, this is being done to ensure that exchanges operating without complying with FIU regulations and guidelines should either start following them or leave India by shutting down their services. Now, a lot of people I know, as well as on social media, started to panic about what will happen, and I am here to answer that so people from India especially will not panic anymore.
One of the most famous exchanges named in this list of 25 was BingX. I personally use BingX as one of the centralized exchanges, but let me be honest with you. Even if legal proceedings start today, it will take at least a year to reach the point where they either comply with FIU regulations or leave India. So for now, you don’t have to panic immediately.
Don’t start selling your holdings at a loss. Don’t start cashing out. In fact, I will ask you to hold, look for an alternative if you want to shift your funds, and then calmly move them from any of the exchanges that received the notice.
There are still many exchanges that allow you to use them without doing KYC or without complying with FIU regulations, but my suggestion is to start using decentralized exchanges because that is where the future lies.
At least for the next few years, you are going to feel safer on decentralized exchanges. There are so many in the market, like Leodex, Tribaldex, and many more. So choose accordingly and start using them. Learn how to use them because that is the future, and you should soon shift your funds there.
Even if you are a trader, you can use a decentralized exchange for trading purposes. And if you are a holder, then a Web3 wallet is more than enough for you. So don’t keep your holdings on a centralized exchange. Instead, I suggest you create a Web3 wallet or buy a hardware wallet from the market and keep your long-term holdings there. That is how you are going to protect your funds and also protect yourself from paying 30% taxes to the government.
I am not against paying taxes. I always ask people to pay taxes on time. But I have to agree that this 30% tax is a burden on common people, and the government should reconsider decreasing it to maybe 10%.
Then people will not run away from paying taxes and will pay them on time. But if the taxes remain at 30% or more after adding penalties, then obviously people will start finding loopholes to avoid paying. So I think this has to be done from both sides.
The government should assure common people that they will come up with solutions so that we don’t have to pay such high taxes irresponsibly, and then people will start using Indian exchanges with regulations without any problem.
That is my opinion. To conclude, I want to say: don’t panic, stay calm, learn how to use decentralized exchanges, learn how to use Web3 wallets, and then shift your long-term holdings and trading funds to those places.
Thank you, and happy trading everyone.