Coinbase registers with FIU in India amid market comeback efforts
With reports of American exchange platform Coinbase having been in talks with regulators to re-enter the Indian market emerging last month, the firm has made further progress with those efforts, registering with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
In a blog post published to the Coinbase website on March 11, the company confirmed that it had successfully registered with the FIU, a national agency which is responsible for gathering, processing, analyzing and circulating data related to suspicious financial transactions.
Offering retail services in 2025
As a consequence of this registration, the company intends to commence trading activity in India once more, with plans to offer retail services to Indian investors later this year.
Commenting on the development, John O'Loghlen, Regional Managing Director for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region at Coinbase, stated that the company is committed to building its business in markets where potential exists for crypto and on-chain innovation. He added:
“India represents one of the most exciting market opportunities in the world today, and we’re proud to deepen our investment here in full compliance with local regulations.”
News of this development has been interpreted as a positive for the crypto sector. Taking to X, Suraj Chawla, founder and CEO of GPU.net, a decentralized network of GPUs, suggested that the registration was indicative of a softening in the regulatory approach taken to crypto in India. He believes that the Trump administration in the U.S., which is pro-crypto, is collaborating with India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He added:
“This is extremely positive news with countries like UAE, IND, RUS, USA adopting mainstream crypto and working on critical infra like exchanges, ETF and stablecoins.”
Taking this development as a sign of a crypto awakening in India, Chawla suggested that we could see major Indian corporations like Reliance, Tata and Adani going into mainstream crypto infrastructure.
‘Informal pressure’
Coinbase was forced to disable UPI payments on its platform in India back in 2022 due to what Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong described at the time as “informal pressure” from India’s central bank, the Royal Bank of India (RBI). Armstrong offered the following take on the status of crypto in India at that time:
“India is a unique market in the sense that the Supreme Court has ruled that they can't ban crypto, but there are elements in the government there, including at the Reserve Bank of India, who don't seem to be as positive on it.”
In 2023 the company disabled new user sign-ups on its platform.
India’s central bank has leaned against crypto over the last few years. In January of last year, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, said that there was no place in India for “crypto mania,” following the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. He said at that time that "the way we look at crypto remains unchanged, irrespective of who does what."
While taking what has been at best an ambiguous approach to cryptocurrencies, the RBI has advocated for the adoption of blockchain technology by India’s banks.
