Speaking to analysts at an earnings call, Armstrong said that the RBI’s ban might violate a Supreme Court ruling, but the company would work with the regulator to relaunch.
Armstrong’s comments come at a time when cryptocurrencies have seen a crash in value, with Bitcoin falling below $30,000 at one time, the lowest in almost a year. Coinbase was launched on April 7, announcing that investors could participate using UPI as a payment mode. The same day, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) issued a statement, “We are not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.”
“It’s been called a ‘shadow ban’. They’re applying soft pressure behind the scenes to try to disable some of these payments, which might be going through UPI. I guess we have a concern that they may be actually in violation of the Supreme Court ruling, which would be interesting to find out if it were to go there. But I think our preference is really just to work with them and focus on relaunching. I think there’s a number of paths that we have to relaunch with other payment methods there,” said Armstrong.
Describing the UPI integration as a great example of Coinbase’s international strategy, Armstrong said that India is a unique market where the Supreme Court has ruled that crypto cannot be banned but there are elements in the government, including at the RBI, who don’t seem to be positive on it.
The RBI was not available for comment till the time of going to press.
According to Armstrong, in most places in the “free world and democracies”, crypto is going to be regulated eventually and legal, but it’s going to take time for them to get comfortable with this. “That’s why we’re going to go launch, even if we’re not exactly sure how it’s going to — the reaction is going to be received, we’re going to launch because it forces the discussion to be had. Now the press is talking about it in India. Now there’s meetings happening that are going to talk about how we get to the next step,” he said.
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