By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Binance is exploring India. It has made its first major acquisition in the country as it has bought WazirX, an Indian crypto exchange.
The state of the cryptocurrency industry within India has been in a complicated one for the last few years. However, it seems that Binance is not among those who do not believe in the future of crypto in the country. It has been recently revealed that Binance purchased WazirX, a Mumbai-based crypto exchange in a deal that is believed to be worth between $5 million and $10 million.
Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning that in the past, the Indian government has implemented laws that were not very pro-crypto and have made it hard for many crypto-related organizations to receive banking services and conduct their operations. This has led to several crypto firms either closing shop in India altogether on moving their operations overseas in order to stay afloat. With the rumors of a full-on crypto ban being in the air, many have lost hope for the crypto industry within India as a whole.
Binance Buys into India
This is an interesting move on the part of Binance because as many have been exiting the crypto market within India, they seem to be diving in headfirst and this is one of the major acquisitions that has taken place within the space in the last few years. WazirX only launched operations this year and features both a crypto-to-crypto gateway and a P2P system. The P2P system will be implemented onto the Binance gateway in early 2020 and will allow customers to immediately trade in digital assets by first buying Tether.
Despite the apathy that exists towards the crypto market in India, Binance management seems to have a lot of faith.
“The young demographic in India gives an edge to adopt and build on new financial technologies, and I believe this will play a vital role in making India a global blockchain innovation centre to also spur cryptocurrency adoption throughout the larger public in the country,” said Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
While WazirX has been acquired by Binance, the management will continue to run operations from Mumbai and according to them, the next wave of crypto adoption will take place in Third World nations and India, having over 1 billion people, it is a prime location for such development.
“India will be one of our first forays into stimulating financial growth and access in developing nations beyond the country,” Zhao said. “We will be continuing to work towards furthering crypto adoption, lowering the barrier to entry. One of the main goals is to add more fiat currencies to Binance and work with local partners to add as many fiat-to-crypto pairs as possible.”
Allegedly, this is not the only new development at Binance as it has been disclosed that Binance is developing a new C2C fiat service that is not yet available to the public but is already featured on the official website. It is expected that some information will be given about the upcoming service soon.