India’s WazirX Sees 90 Percent Dip in Crypto Trading Volume Amid Regulatory Delays

WazirX disclosed the trajectory of its business this year only to give an insight into the slump spell that the crypto market is under as India awaits to complete regulatory deployments to oversee the sector. The Indian crypto trading platform, in 2023, managed to generate around $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,315 crore) in terms of trading volume. This is a sharp 90 percent decline from its previous year's trading volume of $10 billion (roughly Rs. 83,151 crore) and 2021's figure of $43 billion (roughly Rs. 3,57,534 crore).

In terms of addressing the potential reasons why trading volumes may have sunk this year, WazirX decided to keep its lips sealed. Interestingly, its competitor CoinDCX crypto exchange fired 12 percent of its workforce earlier this year, clearly pinning the blame for pushing investors away on India's tax regime.

The exchange, did however, give other insights that it observed in-terms of trading patterns in India for the year of 2023. Bitcoin (BTC), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), and Polygon (MATIC) emerged as the most traded cryptocurrencies among members of the Indian crypto community on WazirX.

Women constituted 22 percent of the total trading volume on the platform, and women aged between 21-40 years made up 83 percent of the total volume traded by all women users. In the case of men, the age bracket of 21-40 years constituted 76 percent of all men users on the platform.

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Haryana house the bigger shares of traders, whereas the states with the highest trading volumes are Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Haryana.

The Vice President of the trading platform, Rajagopal Menon, has projected a bright future for blockchain-related sectors in the days to come.

“With the advent of maturing blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies are set to evolve beyond speculative assets, becoming integrated within supply chain management, healthcare, and digital identity verification. Asset tokenisation is positioned to become a prominent trend. User experiences across Web3 technologies will witness a revolution in 2024, and the Bitcoin halving signals a bull market in coming times,” Menon said, in a rather optimistic forecast for the crypto sector.

Along with CoinDCX, CoinSwitch recently accepted that crypto trading volumes and user queries have indeed taken a hit in India, which have had clear impact on the business.

As far as India's crypto laws are concerned, it could take another eighteen months leading up to mid-2025 for all crypto regulations to see light of the day in the nation. India is accessing all possible impacts of involving crypto with its existing financial systems.