Most local exchanges have fully functional INR markets but haven’t toppled the volumes of international Peer to Peer Exchanges like Paxful and LBC. Infact there is a sizeable increase in Volumes on P2P exchanges as well.
It is close to a month since the honourable Supreme Court of India quashed Reserve Bank of India’s “Banking Ban” that prohibited Banking support to exchanges. Many exchanges rushed to on-ramp INR deposits and withdrawals as quickly as possible post the judgment.
Now that the dust has slightly settled, and significant amount of time has passed, we are observing the volumes rise not only on fiat based Indian spot exchanges, but also growing on Peer to Peer exchanges, in some cases, beating the incumbents.
Trading Volume BTC/INR
Despite 100s of trading pairs, almost all exchanges have the highest chunk of their trading volume coming from Bitcoin – BTC. Hence a glimpse on BTC to INR trading pair volumes can give us a fair idea of how the market is reacting to the SC Judgment.
Before March 04, only a handful of exchanges truly supported INR based trading of Bitcoin. Exchanges like WazirX encouraged BTC/USDT trading, with near zero volumes on INR market. Bitbns supported both INR and USDT market, same with CoinDCX and several other exchanges.
Peer to Peer exchanges like LocalBitcoins and Paxful support multiple payment methods for using INR to buy or sell BTC. Our recent comparison of both exchanges gives you a glimpse of how these international P2P exchanges are still competing neck to neck with other exchanges.
Post judgment, exchanges like WazirX, CoinDCX saw volumes of 20-30 BTC each day on average with huge jumps on certain days while slumps on other. It can be determined from the charts on the sites. The exact historic volume of Bitbns can’t be determined due to the lack of charts. Since the judgment, these volumes are evidently rising as markets like BTC/USDT also haven’t seen a slump.
The peer to peer exchanges are also cashing in on the latest volumes. International P2P exchanges like Paxful recorded an ATH volume of 139 BTC for week ending on March 21, 2020.
India’s monthly and weekly activity on Paxful had been rising up even when the banking ban was in place, Ray Youssef, CEO and co-founder of Paxful told Coin Crunch India. He added,
“This shows that they (Indian Traders) have the appetite for cryptocurrency and we believe the numbers are set to go higher for the foreseeable future.”
Ray Youssef, CEO and co-founder of Paxful
This is a testament about maturity of the market where loyalists and new users both are trading carefully and with due scrutiny on available platforms.
Multifaceted INR Usability
As a large population of India may prefer trading by transferring their fiat balances from their bank in exchange for crypto, there maybe several who prefer a variety of other methods such as PayTM and other wallets.
Aside from Bitbns, no other Indian exchange provides support for wallets. The exchange also only support Mobikwik.
This limitation becomes an advantage for P2P exchange which offer several payment methods including wallets and gift cards as well.
The rising trading volumes proves India is ready for the next wave of investments. It remains to see who will emerge as a winner for India in the coming months or years. As of today, the healthy competition is good for the market and for traders that can choose from many options.
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