India’s crypto crowd fights back

India’s beleaguered blockchain industry has finally got some solid support to ensure its survival, with an influential industry evangelist evoking the vision of a billion smartphones acting as gateways to the brave new world of decentralised finance.
In this world, Wall Street’s capabilities will be available to everyone, according to angel investor Balaji Srinivasan, formerly the chief technology officer at Coinbase Global Inc, the largest US crypto exchange about to go public. “We could turn every phone into not just a bank account but a bonafide Bloomberg Terminal,” he writes on his blog.
Mobile banking has indeed emerged as a way to end financial exclusion, a chronic problem in all emerging markets. In India, payments worth almost $60 billion are now taking place every month via wireless devices, three-fifths more than ATM withdrawals. A year ago, cash was ahead by 37%. At this rate of digital adoption, the lead enjoyed by checks might also soon vanish.
But because India has done exceedingly well in mobile payments, the bureaucracy has developed a phlegmatic resistance to newer ideas. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are misunderstood as instruments of money laundering that offer no real benefits. The country’s nascent blockchain industry — survivor of an attempt on its life in 2018 — is growing up in fear. According to media reports, a new law might ban all tokenised representation of money — unless it is the central bank’s own electronic cash.
Srinivasan’s advocacy has thus come at a crucial time. A digital wallet that can handle both central bank-issued electronic cash and cryptocurrencies will end up “giving every Indian the ability to make both domestic and international transactions of arbitrary complexity, attracting crypto capital from around the world, and leapfrogging the 20th century financial system entirely,” he says in his blog post.
Paper, Plastic or Phone?

—Bloomberg