In recent times, financial markets across the globe, including India, have been abuzz with words like cryptocurrencies, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and Non-Financial Tokens (NFT). Bitcoin, which came into existence in 2009, is probably one of the first cryptocurrencies in circulation. Apart from bitcoin, there are currently more than 8,000 other cryptocurrencies in existence. While many of these cryptos have little to no following or trading volumes, others enjoy immense popularity among investors. In India, crypto mining has been a challenge due to uncertainties around laws and regulations along with the huge infrastructure and power costs associated with the mining setup. However, there has not been any explicit law that bans crypto trading related activities. With the rise of the blockchain industry, crypto trading has gained tremendous traction in the Indian market. While India now has 15 homegrown crypto exchange platforms that enable trading of cryptos, the market largely has been unregulated with no specific consumer protection laws or redressal mechanism yet.
