Investors Seek Regulatory Clarity On Crypto After Exchanges Disable Deposits

CoinSwitch Kuber which has more than 15 million users, was not allowing users to load deposits on its applications, although, withdrawals of funds were still allowed.

Rival WazirX through its Twitter account informed its users that UPI is not available. It also added that they had no estimated time limit to fix the issue.

Further, WazirX in a statement mentioned its deposit facility via UPI had been disabled in December, however, the exchange did not elaborate.

The move of the two crypto exchanges comes after when Coinbase and MobiKwik disabled INR deposits using UPI.

Coinbase on its website has alerted that “As of April 10, buys are currently disabled due to an ongoing issue we’re experiencing with the UPI system. We’re working hard to resolve the issue, and we advise that you check your account periodically to see if the issue is fixed.”

“Note that we don’t support another payment method to buy crypto at this time. Thank you for your patience and understanding,” Coinbase had added.

Coinbase which debuted in the Indian market on April 7, had intimated that they accept payments through UPI. However, right after that National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees UPI operations, clarified in a statement that they weren’t aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.

On April 7, NCPI clarified saying, “With reference to some recent media reports around the purchase of Cryptocurrencies using UPI, National Payments Corporation of India would like to clarify that we are not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.”

“Regulatory clarity is the need of the hour,” said Abhishek Malhotra, a founding partner of TMT Law Practice. “There are currently a lot of conflicting signals on the regulatory regime, leading to lack of certainty, ” reported Reuters.

From April 1, under the Finance Bill 2022, a 30% capital gains tax is imposed on crypto transactions. Further, a loss incurred during the transfer of the virtual asset will no longer be allowed to set off against any income calculated under the “other” provision of the IT Act as the word “other” has been removed.

Also, 1% TDS will be deducted from crypto-assets starting in July.

On Wednesday, as per CoinMarketCap, the global crypto market cap is $1.87 trillion, a 0.27% increase over the last day. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $89.46 billion, which makes a 11.78% decrease.

Further, the total volume in DeFi is currently $9.78 billion, 10.93% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins is now $74.36 billion, which is 83.12% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.

As per the CoinMarketCap live trading performance, Bitcoin’s price is currently $40,015.97. Bitcoin’s dominance is currently 40.77%, a decrease of 0.26% over the day.