Several crypto apps are no longer appearing in Apple’s App Store in India, including the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance.
Indian Binance users took to X to share screenshots of the app no longer being available in the App Store and urged the company to confirm its Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) registration in the country.
“We are aware of new changes that have been introduced regarding crypto exchanges on the iOS App Store in India, impacting the Binance App,” the world’s largest crypto exchange wrote in a post on its South Asian X handle. “The ongoing situation is not unique to #Binance and we remain committed to complying with local regulations and maintaining dialogue with regulators worldwide to ensure the continued availability of our services.”
In the meantime, existing users remain unaffected and “rest assured that your funds are SAFU,” the company told customers. (SAFU stands for “Secure Asset Fund for Users,” an insurance fund set up to compensate investors in emergency situations.)
India, the leader in grassroots crypto adoption, has seen many of its citizens turn to foreign exchanges in the face of high capital gains taxes domestically. Because of that, the nine-app-sized void can’t simply be plugged by homegrown alternatives, leaving users to wait and hope for their foreign apps to make a comeback.
Why Apple pulled crypto apps off its India app store
On Dec. 28, India’s finance ministry sent “show cause” notices to nine offshore crypto entities, accusing them of “illegally operating” in the country.
The government levelled allegations against Binance and eight others—Kucoin, Houbi, Kraken, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC Global, and Bitfinex—of being non-compliant with India’s money laundering laws, which require platforms facilitating cryptocurrency and fiat currency exchanges or transfer of crypto assets to register with the FIU. The obligation is “activity-based” and not derived from physical presence, the finance ministry said.
At that time itself, the finance ministry had asked the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) to block the URLs of these nine exchanges. A little over a week later, Apple has pulled these apps from its App Store in India—on Meity’s instructions, Bloomberg reported citing anonymous sources on Wednesday (Jan. 10).
Companies of interest: Indian alternatives like CoinDCX
When TikTok was banned in India 2020, Indian users and creators alike started shopping for homegrown alternatives. There’s perhaps something less volatile about regulation targeting domestic firms.
As the crypto crisis brews, homegrown rivals have taken the opportunity to put their platforms forward amid the upheaval. Chennai-headquartered KoinBX, for instance, called for more signups, touting FUI registrations as their leg up. Separately, Sumit Jain, co-founder and CEO at Mumbai-based CoinDCX, presented a lengthy case for investors in lurch, promising a “safe, simple, and cost-effective” transition “from non-compliant offshore exchanges to compliant Indian exchanges.” The company even announced a $1 million treasury fund to facilitate asset transfers, and the app is offering a 1% bonus until Jan. 18.
But these local offerings may not be viable alternatives. “Indian exchanges are truly rubbish,” crypto influencer RK Gupta posted on X. Many seem to concur. Others are asking questions—for foreign players to show FUI registrations, for compliance timelines and when the apps will return, and so on—but they’re not asking for Indian alternatives. Some even say they’d rather “quit crypto” than switch to an Indian exchange, owing to poor tech and exorbitant taxes on profits.
Paying heed to Jain’s calls, one X user apparently made a “high token deposit” from Binance to CoinDCX—but his transfer isn’t reflecting in his wallet, and the CoinDCX customer care is unresponsive. What’s more disappointing is that this isn’t a one-off case. Over the last year, social media has been inundated with unsolved complaints, especially of stuck withdrawals, against CoinDCX. In the new year, the Delhi Police even started probing the company for fraud.
Quotable: India’s prime minister on crypto regulation
“The rapid pace of change of technology is a reality—there is no point in ignoring it or wishing it away. Instead, the focus should be on adoption, democratisation and a unified approach. At the same time, the rules, regulations and framework around it should not belong to one country or a group of countries. So not only crypto, but all emerging technologies need a global framework and regulations.”
—Indian prime minister Narendra Modi at the G20 Summit last year