In an interesting turn of events, the price of BTC in India has been steadily in rising to match the global prices. Only hours ago on Coinome.com the price of BTC was same as on CMC. This is great because in recent times BTC prices in India have been lower by around 3-8% on most Indian exchanges. But today, I was able to withdraw at global prices or as I publish this post, we're about $100 higher than CMC-which is awesome!
Prior to the RBI mandate and India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's budget speech, BTC usually traded 5-30% above global prices in India. Yes 30% on some days! But in the last 2 months, it has generally been on the lower side, sometimes absolutely shit!
Most new investors from India are typically weary and lacking knowledge of the cryptocurrency domain have been panic selling at every one of these events causing the demand and volumes to drop significantly. Coinsecure's BTC theft also resulted in a major drop in BTC trading volumes in India. It was one of the bigger BTC exchanges after all.
However, in the past week BTC prices in INR have risen back upto as high as 670,000 INR ($10026). This is fantastic because it has been a while since prices in India managed to overtake global prices. A year ago we'd trade in our BTC for 20% premium on a daily basis which was absolutely amazing. Those days participation from India on Steemit was also very high.
The negative news propelled by Indian media FUD and ignorance on part of investors has resulted in many Steemit users from India going on a selling spree and also reducing their activity on the platform. It's true we have new users joining in and i'm on-boarding many now and then. But, the fact is that many are scared about government intervention and lack of knowledge of this space has made it difficult to onboard new users and retain some of the older ones.
However, now it seems as though many investors from India are starting to taking advantage of the window to purchase and sell btc until June, 2018. RBI's mandate allows exchanges to remain operational with Crypto/INR pairs until end of June. If RBI gets a stay order we might see the situation improve.
However, p2p trading allows anyone to encash easily without any legal issues in India. This is because most p2p transactions are almost untraceable. Because, government cannot pinpoint the nature of the transactions and why it took place unless the people transacting decide to declare their reasons-which could be anything under the sun.
People are utilising the remaining time to buy and hold BTC and they can easily withdraw at a later date. Now that prices of BTC are on the rise again from its $6000 lows, it presents new opportunities for the smart Indian investor to get involved in cryptocurrencies once again. It would be wise to remember that Indian market specific issues have no bearing on international prices, volume and trading activity.
If you panic sold I hope you will now reconsider your stance. If you are buying then consider holding for the long haul. There's a possibility that the government might soften its stance and bring in some policy to regulate trading of cryptocurrencies.
Even if it doesn't happen, you can use p2p channels for buying and selling and that'll make using Steemit just as easy as it is now. It's just a matter of time.
Steemit users from India, just be prepared for the worst. At this point it wouldn't be a bad idea to engage in p2p transactions with other users from India. However, if you do, exercise caution. I would love to see our market grow so that one day we have an escrow based p2p channel for buying/selling Steem from India.
I hope you have signed the ongoing petition here! Stay tuned for more updates on the cryptocurrency side of things from India.
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- Steem.Chat Contest #24
- Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
- Cryptocurrency India: An Update Regarding Reserve Bank's Ban & Link To Petition!
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