New Delhi: This year has been an engaging one for cryptocurrency in India. The past year has witnessed Bitcoin hitting record highs and major institutional buy-ins from mainstream companies. Crypto has been made a place in pop culture as well, with Elon Musk being the most popular face. India has encouraged a positive regulatory environment around crypto. Also, people’s interest in crypto has emerged highly.

Developments in 2021:

With RBI lifting the ban on cryptocurrency in March 2020, a surge in user registration and daily trading volumes has been witnessed in crypto exchanges among the people in India. This surge continued till 2021. Besides, the crypto exchange platform, WazirX has a user base of more than 10 million that traded over $43 billion in 2021.

Although there was a lack of clarity regarding crypto regulation in India as well as the price volatility crypto witnessed in the last few months, India emerged as the second in crypto adoption rate in the world after Vietnam.

Besides, in this year, Bitcoin remains as the top crypto in terms of market capitalisation in 2021 and gained over 50% since the beginning of the year.

Meanwhile, a bill banning ‘private cryptocurrencies’ which was ought to be introduced in the Budget session of Parliament in February 2021, did not end up getting tabled. However, now the Indian government has decided to introduce ‘The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021’ in Parliament and is currently under process. 

Recently, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, stated that the new bill on crypto will be brought up in the House after being approved by the cabinet. Besides, this bill will positively regulate the crypto markets in India. Also, the crypto trades and investments will be permitted with few restrictions for aspects like risk management and investor protection.

Expected trends in 2022

In the upcoming year, more solutions will be coming up that will make decentralised blockchains cheaper, scalable, and sustainable. However, Bitcoin dominance might undergo a reduction and may prompt many projections from industry experts. Notably, Bitcoin’s dominance in trading volume is steadily declining with more of the market is interested in quality projects like Ethereum, Solana among others than before.

With increasing interest in space, we might see the regulatory clarity that we always wanted. PM Narendra Modi himself called for crypto regulation and positive action is expected to be taken on this front in 2022.

Besides, most people will be spending time in the metaverse, creating NFTs, working on DeFi, and playing on GameFi platforms.