INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Sandeep Nailwal co-founded Polygon in 2017.India's dithering on whether to embrace digital assets is causing thousands of developers,
investors and entrepreneurs to leave for places with more friendly regulation, according to the co-founder of the country's most famous
Ethereum blockchain system, said in an interview from Dubai.India, with an estimated 15 million active crypto users, has been stuck in
regulatory limbo since the Supreme Court in 2020 overturned a central bank ban on digital tokens
The government this year unveiled a tax on crypto transactions without formally declaring that it won't ban trading, a move that became
ban virtual coins or regulate them
The emirate is aspiring to be a crypto hub for the Middle East -- just as it is for traditional financial services -- and on Wednesday, it
adopted a law for regulating digital assets.Powerhouse?Polygon's eponymous protocol is used by developers to make Ethereum transactions
It has some 7,000 decentralized apps (or dapps), more than 130 million unique users, and handles over 3 million daily transactions
The population of 1.4 billion people skews young, with a growing, well-educated middle class
That, combined with a less-developed traditional financial system, has led to the world's second-highest crypto adoption rate behind
Vietnam, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis
a larger population, last year declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal.Governments around the world have long grappled with the
need to tame the worst excesses of an industry beset by speculation, fraud and hacking incidents, while at the same time harnessing its
explosive growth and potential for innovation
Countries from Singapore to the U.S
Bitcoin surged as much as 11% on Thursday as word got out of an impending executive order from U.S
faces determined opposition from the central bank
And while it's not uncommon for central banks to express skepticism toward crypto, the Reserve Bank of India's criticism has been
bubble; a few days later, his deputy said cryptocurrencies are akin to Ponzi schemes, threaten financial stability and should be banned.Edul
Patel, the co-founder of Mudrex, an automated digital asset trading platform backed by Y Combinator, chose to set up his company in the U.S
in 2019 after the central bank cut off crypto-related businesses from India's payment network
to move to places like Dubai, Patel said in an interview
Governments often use so-called sandbox setups as a testing ground for promising but unproven financial technologies.Patel also cited
startups focused on blockchain and Web3 applications
