Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has revealed that it has halted operation in India a few days after it launched.
Coinbase cited “informal pressure” from the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as the cause.
Coinbase Global provided an update on its Indian operation during the company’s earnings call.
Coinbase launched in India on April 7. The company said at the time that users could use the UPI system to buy cryptocurrencies on the platform. However, the company disabled the UPI option a few days later.
“A few days after launching, we ended up disabling UPI because of some informal pressure from the Reserve Bank of India, which is kind of the Treasury equivalent there.”
“And 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 Reserve Bank of India, who don’t seem to be as positive on it,” the Coinbase boss Brian Armstrong opined.
“Basically, they’re applying soft pressure behind the scenes to try to disable some of these payments, which might be going through UPI,” he detailed.
The Coinbase executive further said: “I guess we have a concern that they may be actually in violation of the supreme court ruling, which would be interesting to find out if it were to go there.”
