Every Indian who trades bitcoin or any kind of cryptocurrency should be wanting to burn down the brand-new Coinbase office in New Delhi. It won't be open long, regardless.
Armstrong just officially announced moving Coinbase into India at the start of this month, but his press release said an incredibly stupid thing, which got all bitcoin & crypto exchanges across the country penalized!
Just before he opened the office, there was already a new law coming into effect that puts a 30% tax on all crypto income, without allowing loss offsets or deductions. That was already devastating to the industry and it went into effect on April 1. This was all announced just before his office opened, and liquidity at all exchanges in the country has dried up 75% already.
Being the ignoramus that he is, Armstrong found a way to destroy the last 25% as well.
The most popular network to get rupees into 3rd party accounts in India is called the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), much like ACH in the US or SEPA in the Eurozone. UPI is owned and run fully by the central bank of India, the RBI. The RBI absolutely hates all things crypto, and are the major sponsor of the tax bill above.
Yet somehow the banks partnered with crypto exchanges were still allowed to use UPI to get rupees into & out of exchanges, that is, until Tuesday the 5th. On that day Armstrong's press release went out, saying that Coinbase had opened an office in New Delhi, and made the claim that they would accept rupees using UPI. (!)
On Wednesday the 6th, all hell broke out down there. UPI's parent company responded that NO crypto exchanges could use UPI: https://twitter.com/NPCI_NPCI/status/1512091446865633285
Apparently it was OK for banks to make that money as long as no one told the RBI that they were fostering bitcoin/crypto adoption. It's no longer OK now, and ALL crypto exchanges nationwide have removed UPI support already. The #2 way to allow rupees, Mobikwik, was removed the month prior. So basically all rupees on all Indian exchanges are completely stuck unless users convert them to crypto and move them out to local wallets. That pretty much destroyed the entire national industry right there.
Time to start teaching Indians how to use Bisq!