Indian Banks Suspend Bitcoin Exchange Accounts

Customers in New Delhi have found themselves unable to deposit or withdraw money by selling their shares of virtual coins, which has unleashed and caused a lot of havoc among investors. Despite cryptocurrency exchanges rising in price to a whopping $3.5billion in just one month, some major Indian banks have actually started suspending the accounts of some of the exchanges. The banks include the State Bank of India, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Yes Bank. It was also reported that major exchanges such as Koinex, Zebpay, Unocoin, Coinsecure and BtcxIndi are among the ones who face this crackdown. Koinex issued a statement to all of their customers that, ‘a tussle’, as they described it, between payment service payment partners and the banks that hold the accounts has caused an ‘indefinite delay’ in the settlement of a huge amount of deposits to Koinex over the past couple of weeks. None of the banks involved have officially commented on the matter, or any development; and the Economic Times has actually quoted an anonymous source, saying that the move was actually a deterrent for any suspicious transactions, and that India’s Central Bank actually had no part to play in it at all. They said; “The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not issued any directive to us – it’s a cautionary move on our part. We are wary about the purpose for which some of these current accounts are being used.” The income tax department has supposedly started sending notices to all of their major investors in cryptocurrencies, who mainly comprise of real estate traders, and jewellery traders. Amazingly, the cryptocurrency exchanges that have been affected have actually all taken this with a pinch of salt. India is very quick to ensure that they have not banned cryptocurrencies, but the central bank and government have issued a number of warnings to the public against investing in what they feel are ‘Ponzi Schemes.’. Image Source: Wikipedia Commons Sponsored by