Cryptocurrency Trading with INR in India

The state of cryptocurrency in India in 2017

The cryptocurrency revolution is upon India since December 2017, when Bitcoin hit an all-time high of close to $20000. With this dynamic increase in value, the hype around cryptocurrencies dramatically increased. The cryptocurrency markets garnered much attention from traditional financial institutions and regulatory authorities.

Dynamics in 2018

Following this dynamic, the Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) issued repeated notices to caution adopters of cryptocurrencies against trading/ using them. On April 5, 2018, the Reserve Bank of India highlighted it the commercial banks should stop dealing with the entities that deal in digital currencies, such as bitcoins, ethereum, among others.

P2P platforms by cryptocurrency exchanges

Cryptocurrency exchanges across the country circumvented this ring-fencing approach by fostering a peer to peer ecosystem for cryptocurrency trade.

Various platforms like Loop by Koinex,DCXInsta by CoinDCXand Flux by CoinDeltagained popularity among the crypto trading community. Crypto traders turned to platforms like Remitanoand Local Bitcoinsfor gaining an entry into the global cryptocurrency market.

The use of peer-to-peer platforms eliminated the exchanges dependency on banks and financial institutions and gave power back to users and India continues to be a hotbed for cryptocurrency trading and investment.

How to buy cryptocurrency with INR in India?

If you wish to be a part of the cryptocurrency revolution, there are many ways to get started with cryptocurrency trade using INR (fiat currency).

The simplest way to get started is to buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDT using a fiat currency (INR) on a P2P platformof an exchange. With the number of platforms available, a new trader might get overwhelmed. However, there are a few features you should look for before you get started with a platform.

Selecting a platform to get started

Here’s an exhaustive list of the features:

- High Liquidity

- Transaction Speed

- Competitive Pricing (Best price in the market)

- Number of altcoins/tokens

- Trading fee

Let’s discuss them briefly.

● High Liquidity

Liquidity is the volume of cryptocurrency available on an exchange for buying/ selling. On exchanges with high liquidity, buying and selling of cryptocurrencies happens instantly.

CoinDCX,a hybrid cryptocurrency exchange currently has the highest liquidityin India. This exchange shares liquidity with the world’s top exchanges like Binance, Huobi and HitBTC.

Other exchanges with average liquidity are Bitbns and WazirX.

● Transaction Speed

On P2P platforms, the time taken for buying/ selling cryptocurrencies against INR takes anywhere between 2 to 24 hours. In some cases, it takes 2-3 days.

On platforms like Koinex, users wait for days or weeks to get a matching request for deposit/ withdrawal of INR.

Platforms like Bitbns have tedious processes for depositing/ withdrawing INR like generating vouchers on a third party website or generating requests for P2P deposits.

DCXInsta offers INR deposits through UPI/IMPS.While DCXInsta started off with instant (less than 60 seconds) deposits and withdrawals, now the INR deposit/ withdrawal time is anywhere between 2 mins to 2 hours.

● Competitive Pricing (Best price in the market) / Trading Fee

Bitbns offers the most competitive pricing and trade fees compared to other cryptocurrency exchange platform. Followed by CoinDCX’s DCXInsta. The prices of cryptocurrencies against INR and regulated by demand and supply in the market and change according to market sentiment.

For traders, trading fee rebates and discounts are crucial and currently no platform offers the same. Bitbns makes an exception here and offers traders a rebate on the withdrawal feethat a trader incurs on withdrawing from any other cryptocurrency exchange and depositing to Bitbns. The catch here is their strategy for increasing deposits on their exchange.

Bitbns is low on liquidity and this move would increase liquidity on their exchange.

● Number of altcoins/ tokens

The best portfolio is the one that is well balanced. Traders balance risk in their portfolio by buying into stable coins and less volatile coins.Bigger profits are booked by taking higher risks by trading in more volatile coins.

For putting together a balanced portfolio, you need more options and a range of tokens to choose from. With 100+ altcoins/ tokens, CoinDCX is leading other cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.