Co-founders of WazirX crypto exchange, Nischal Shetty and Siddharth Menon moved to Dubai for more crypto and business opportunities. The headquarters remain in Mumbai, but the base will be operated from the hub of the crypto world.
India is one of the leading Web3 and crypto markets in the world. The industry is so progressive that almost every new innovative startup is originating from the country.
Despite the huge potential of the industry, the Indian government refuses to comply with its legislative policies regarding crypto. So many exchanges and crypto users struggle to pay the high-priced taxes for transactions.
Indian startups are forced to leave the country while operating remotely to establish their business on a global scale. Similar to WazirX, many other crypto startups moved to Dubai for better opportunities.
For example, the co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, and his team moved to Dubai two years ago due to the lack of policies in India for Web3 development. ZebPay, an Indian-based crypto exchange, moved to Singapore in 2018, and Mudrex went to the U.S.
There are many other examples of Indians moving out to operate from abroad while keeping their headquarters in India.
The Indian government refuses to accommodate the crypto industry
Crypto and blockchain communities have expressed concerns regarding India’s policy for the industry.
- The government applied a legislative policy for Crypto users to pay 30% tax on virtual digital assets from April 1 with a 1% tax deductible at the source.
- To add more, the government also issued a statement that companies cannot set losses in digital assets against profits.
- The Crypto mining process also requires users to pay a certain amount of tax.
This caused a severe drop in trading volume in the Indian crypto market, stressing thousands of crypto users in the country.
The trading volume dropped by 88% to 96%, based on the reports by Bloomberg.
WazirX took the biggest hit from the declining trading volume, which can also be considered one of the main reasons for the crypto exchange to leave the country and shift to Dubai.
These taxes were applied without any apparent explanation or clarification to the crypto community. Many people have criticized the government’s lack of transparency regarding policies against crypto.
On CBNC-TV 18, Shilpa Mankar Ahluwalia expressed, “The lack of clarity on what the crypto regulatory framework will look like is making investors rethink their decision to make India the base for launching crypto platforms and products.”
Dubai: The Hub of Crypto
Since the launch of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, Dubai is one of the countries that welcomed innovative technology.
Seeing the rising worth of the digital economy, Dubai’s government has decided to welcome every crypto investor or startup to do their business by accommodating them with clear and simple legislative policies.
Dubai plans to become the hub of crypto and web3 development by empowering every potential startup or business.
WazirX Future Plans
Following the transfer to Dubai, the crypto exchange, the WazirX team is ready to kickstart their upcoming projects and co-founders’ individual projects.
WazirX’s spokesperson informed the media about the headquarters by releasing a statement: “We are a remote-first organization with employees in over 70 locations. This gives all the company employees the option to work from anywhere, subject to their comfort and convenience unless they are required to travel officially. WazirX is headquartered in Mumbai and there is no change in any of our operating procedures. It is business as usual.”
Menon has already announced their plans to “update” the app with new features soon. They also launched the Highstreet (HIGH) token deposits to facilitate users in depositing HIGH via Binance for zero fees.
Shetty also announced a project in February with Omar Sayed called ‘Shardeum,’ a layer 1 project on blockchain to solve Scalability and Higher Transaction complications in crypto tokens.
Menon will be partnering up with SuperGaming to launch Tegro, a Web3 game ecosystem marketplace.
Final words
Over the years, India has seen a massive development in Web3 and the blockchain world. There are thousands of software developers and experts launching new startups and bringing new technological innovations to the blockchain industry.
Compared to that, the Indian government refuses to acknowledge the huge potential of blockchain technology and ruled out a high tax percentage, frustrating many startups and crypto users in the country.
India’s economy can improve effectively if the government rules out high tax rates and makes regulatory crypto policies.
As Shetty says in a tweet:
