No surge in investor sign-ups, will work on scalability, say crypto exchanges

Two days after government's announcement of imposing 30 per cent cryptocurrency tax and 1 per cent tax as TDS have got the cryptocurrency community in a tizzy.

However, the crypto exchanges say that they haven’t witnessed any major surge in sign-ups, but the focus will be on enhancement of technological infrastructure and build scalability and security.

To be sure, India has 20 million cryptocurrency investors with nearly $ 5-6 billion assets held by traders.
 
The legalization of cryptocurrency is still a raging debate with the government making clear that any taxation of the virtual digital assets does not render it legal.
 
Ashish Singhal, Founder and CEO, CoinSwitch Kuber told Business Today that the user behaviour on the platform is similar to what it was on other business days. post the crypto tax announcement.

“The data doesn't reflect any specific trend/investor sentiment yet. Our steadfast focus on investor protection and user experience enhancement has helped us extend our offerings to our growing user base amidst crypto mainstreaming excitement. We will continue to improve user experience as we expand our offerings to the next million crypto enthusiasts,” Singhal added.
 
Minal Thukral, Executive Vice President, Growth and strategy at CoinDCX also said the platform hasn’t noticed any incremental increase post the Budget announcement. "We are watching this space closely.. we will get a better picture of how users are reacting over the next few weeks. our platform currently has the capacity to carry 1.5 lakh transactions per second...and we are continuously working to make our platform more robust for a safe and smooth customer experience,” Thakur said.

Moreover, Singhal also added that it will be too premature to issue any kind of forward-looking statement right now. “But we believe that this is very positive for retail investors in the long run. We see the Budget announcement as a positive development overall. What it does is that it removes all ambiguity and signals that the government recognizes this industry. Now, there are more nuances to this; could we look at taxing this at par with other assets like securities? These need to be worked out and I’m hoping that the government will work with the industry on some of these finer aspects,” he added.