Apps for as many as eight cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, Mexc and Kucoin, have disappeared from Apple’s App Store in India, less than two weeks after the companies were reported for operating “illegally” in the country. The Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency that scrutinizes financial transactions, late last month issued show cause notices to nine cryptocurrency companies and claimed they were not compliant with India’s anti-money laundering rules.
The FIU has asked the Indian Ministry of Information Technology to block the websites of all nine services in India. Other exchanges whose apps have been pulled are Huobi, Gate.io, Bittrex, and Bitfinex. Bitstamp, another exchange flagged by the FIU, was still running on the App Store in India.
Many Indian traders have turned to global cryptocurrency platforms in recent quarters in an apparent move to evade taxes. India began taxing virtual currencies last year, imposing a 30% tax on gains and a 1% rebate on every cryptocurrency transaction.
While cryptocurrency exchanges in India, including a16z-backed CoinSwitch Kuber, B Capital-backed CoinDCX, and former Binance partner WazirX, still require strict KYC checks before onboarding new users, the same has not been true. On many global platforms. . (Trading volume on WazirX has dropped by a staggering 97% in two years, partly due to many traders moving to global apps.)
More to follow.