Cryptocurrency exchanges in India are trying to adopt new measures to bypass the ban imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on cryptocurrency trading activities. In order to do so, those exchanges started to list the so called stablecoins, which are generally tethered to stable assets.
Indian Exchanges Bypass Ban
Some of the stable coins, including Tether (USDT) and TrueUSD (TUSD), are starting to gain an important part of the market in India. This could help exchanges reduce the impact of the measures imposed by Indian authorities on cryptocurrencies.
The country’s central bank has forbidden financial institutions and other companies to offer banking services to those enterprises that deal with virtual currencies.
Unocoin, one of the most important virtual currency exchanges, announced that it was going to support TUSD on the Unodax trading platform it manages. The TUSD coin is based on Ethereum (ERC-20) and has been developed by Trusttoken platform. Each TUSD is redeemable for 1 US dollar.
At the moment, Unodax offers support to 23 different TUSD trading pairs including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP), and many others.
As the local media company Inc42 explained, the exchange took the decision to list TUSD in order to minimize the RBI impact on crypto investors and traders.
On the matter, Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of Unodax exchange, commented:
“After the RBI banned bank transfers for crypto trading and investments, we were looking for the plausible solutions to help our users continue to hold, without any disruptions and hassles.”
The RBI instructed banks not to offer banking services to companies that deal with virtual currencies. This is why, stablecoins would help users have a reliable medium of exchange that would minimize the risks of volatility in the market.
Another important cryptocurrency exchange, Zebpay, has announced the listing of TUSD. But there will be support for two trading pairs BTC/TUSD and TUSD/INR. Those users interested in transacting at the exchange with TUSD will not be charged withdrawal fees until August 31, 2018.
Tether has been involved in different controversies in the past regarding its funds and market manipulation. We have written in the past at UseTheBitcoin about Tether and the difficulties it faced during 2018.
