India’s Crypto Drama: Exchanges, Blocking, and a Whole Web of Loops

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In the great tradition of bureaucratic magic, India’s Financial Intelligence Unit has just declared 49 cryptocurrency exchanges-“let’s call them digital gold distributors with a penchant for chaos”-subject to anti-money laundering checks. 🤑 This stems from a 2023 governmental decree that decided to classify crypto providers under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, now herding them under the same regulatory umbrella as banks, which are simply very comfortable with gold coins, cheques, or digital numbers-all three are likely to vanish if you blink. 🪙

Resume of the Situation:

  • India demands 49 crypto exchanges play by the rules of the game-strict, suspicious activity-heavy AML drills.
  • 45 domestic platforms and 4 offshore ones (probably in hiding but applying for paperwork somehow) have registered.
  • Non-cooperative foreign platforms now face Indian users trying every trick to access them… while being gently informed the door is, in fact, closed. ⛔️
  • Authorities are now doing the extremely important work of monitoring blockchain shenanigans and arresting the people involved (story: “man caught laundering 42 Bitcoin… into a hat”).

As of January 5, 2026 (forwards, always forwards!), 45 Indian-based exchanges now have all their paperwork neatly filed and regulatory eyebrows raised. The additional four offshore survivors? They’ve managed to play by the rules (or bribed someone’s tea with extra sugar). All registered entities now must perform the litany of regulatory rituals: identity checks like a witch trial, transactions monitored like a toddler with cookies, and suspicious activity reports prepared as if for an inquisitor with a clipboard. 📜

Tracking Crypto: The Library of Traces

The Financial Intelligence Unit’s knowledge is a web of Suspicious Transaction Reports from compliant exchanges. These documents are, by all objective measures, boring, but they vividly outline how crypto is being used in India-mostly for the same purposes as cash in the 1700s: taxes, bribes, and shilling for a boost. 🤍

The FIU did concede, in its infinite wisdom, that crypto could be slightly useful for innovation, investments, or allowing your relatives in jaundiced parts of town to send money home. However, it added, like a grumpy librarian, that this potential is “substantially undermined by misuse-including illegal gambling, fraud, cross-border schemes resembling haggling at a bazaar, and… adult content platforms. Frequently. They’re everywhere.” 🎰

In one notable case, investigators traced crypto payments through over 20 wallets (a journey likely longer than a Discworld pilgrimage) to an illegal website. This proves that, yes, blockchain isn’t magic-it’s a ledger, but one that’s transparent if you peer through the right regulatory monocle. Non-compliant platforms? Penalty kicks. Actual ones. From last fiscal year. Soccer-shaped enforcement. ⚽

Offshore Exchanges: Now Officially Unpopular

India’s gotten quite discrete about who can serve crypto to its citizens. Compliance is now the litmus to enter the country’s crypto sandbox-think of it as a playground for the obedient. Binance, Coinbase, and Mudrex have dutifully handed over paperwork and are currently being watched like the Discworld’s golems (which are also painful to lift). Their peers, like BitMEX and LBank? Now banned from the sandbox. You can tell them the web is broken now. 😤

This left Indian citizens with fewer places to park their digital coins-like herding cats without the cats’ cooperation. The approved exchanges now must also appoint a “local director” who can be found and firewalled by the government if they cause trouble-a sacred ritual of accountability. 🧭

Authorities insist they’re not aiming to bury crypto entirely (would be convenient, but too dramatic). Instead, they wish to place it within a transparent, regulated framework. The FIU concluded that, as long as “platforms cooperate and sprinkle anti-fraud confetti,” the dance of crypto will be permitted to continue. For now. 🌀

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2026-01-07 09:02