The government’s proposal to ban private cryptocurrencies in India with certain exceptions led to massive amounts of panic selling on Tuesday night leading to the crash of India’s biggest crypto exchange, WazirX. Nischal Shetty, founder and CEO of WazirX told BusinessToday.In that the WazirX app was restored after the crash, caused by heavy user activity after the government’s proposed regulation became public.
Users took to social media platforms to complain of their inability to sell/buy Bitcoin on WazirX and their money getting stuck during the processing. Users also flagged the dropping prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, on WazirX and various other Indian exchanges as compared to the values going up on global exchanges.
At 10 am on Wednesday, Bitcoin( BTC) prices on WazirX dropped by 17.17 per cent to touch Rs 37,78,000, Ethereum (ETH) value in INR declined by 14.1 per cent to Rs 2,87,773. Dogecoin was down by 17.21 percent to Rs 14,9000 whereas WazirX’s own token WRX value declined by 22 per cent to Rs 78.
“We'd like to reiterate that WazirX has an open order book and doesn't determine or control the price of any crypto on the exchange. There will always be a difference from exchange to exchange, country to country, etc. depending on the demand and supply. For instance, if more people are willing to sell crypto in INR market instead of USDT market, you'll see slightly lower crypto prices in the INR market. Lastly, we also request all our users to not get afraid and panic sell," the crypto exchange said in a statement.
According to statistics from Internet Mobile Association of India, the total assets held by Indians in various cryptocurrencies has grown 2X in 2021 to $2 billion with order volumes spiking exponentially.
Although the government has proposed banning the private cryptocurrencies with a few exceptions that allows the usage of the underlying technology, industry stakeholders said that they were hopeful that it would not be a blanket ban unlike the last announcement by the finance ministry and wouldn’t include popular digital tokens like Bitcoin, Ethreum etc.
Shetty told BusinessToday.In that currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin are public cryptos which work on public blockchain technology, hence it remains to be seen whether the bill incorporates these tokens.
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