India’s cryptocurrency market was enjoying a ‘golden age’, but now it’s in a mess

With token prices plummeting, customers unable to transfer money to their accounts and a dreaded transaction tax on cryptocurrencies just around the corner, exchanges like Binance-backed WazirX have put expansion plans on the back burner.

“We have cut down all our non-critical costs,” said Rajagopalan Menon, WazirX’s vice-president. “We are hiring only critical hires, we aren’t spending money at all. It’s literally cryptocurrency winter here,” he said, using industry jargon for an extended bear market.

WazirX isn’t alone. Rival exchanges Unocoin and BuyUcoin are also responding to vanishing trading volumes in a market that just last year ranked second in the world for cryptocurrency adoption.

That a cryptocurrency marketplace should be in cost-cutting mode is hardly a surprise – Coinbase Global Inc. and Crypto.com have announced lay-offs in the last two weeks alone – but Indian exchanges face the added burden of a new tax system that executives fear will wipe out what little trading is left. WazirX’s daily volume has slumped about 95 per cent since October, data from CoinGecko shows.