Coinbase (Image: AP)
Even as the heavy 30 percent taxation on gains from cryptocurrencies has come into effect, American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced plans to ramp up its presence in India.
In a blog, the company’s CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that the company will be hiring 1,000 people in the India hub this year, besides continuing investments in Indian startups through its investment arm Coinbase Ventures.
“Coinbase Ventures has already invested $150 million in home-grown Indian technology companies in the crypto and Web3 space, and is constantly identifying new opportunities to help Indian founders scale,” he wrote.
Coinbase Ventures has invested in the only two crypto unicorns in India — CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX.
Coinbase, which is listed on the Nasdaq in the US, had launched its Indian tech hub in 2021 which currently has over 300 employees. Armstrong wrote that the crypto exchange will continue to invest heavily in the India hub.
“We have ambitious plans for India and seek to hire over 1,000 people in our India hub this year alone,” the blog read.
Armstrong has been in India since the beginning of this month and will be interacting with crypto community founders, evangelists and even students. As part of its plans to encourage Indian startups, the company is hosting a crypto community event to discuss the future of crypto and Web 3.0 in India. Coinbase Ventures is also hosting a startup pitch event to encourage and invest in budding startups in the space.
He further wrote, “India has built a robust identity and digital payments infrastructure and implemented it at rapid scale and speed. Combined with India’s world-class software talent, we believe that crypto and Web3 technology can help accelerate India’s economic and financial inclusion goals.”
Coinbase’s pitch comes at a time when the Indian crypto community is going through a major upheaval with the introduction of a 30 percent tax rate on gains. Moneycontrol reported that transaction volumes have plunged by 55 percent while domain traffic dropped by 40 percent on India’s top cryptocurrency exchanges since the tax came into effect on April 1.
Moreover, the data showed that between March 31 and April 1, volumes on WazirX dropped from over 7 crore to 4 crore, on CoinDCX from 1.9 crore to 1.2 crore, on Zebpay from 1.5 crore to 44 lakhs and on Bitbns from 1.1 crore to 96 lakhs.
The crypto community is bracing more setbacks and drop in volumes in the next few months as the 1 percent tax deduction at source (TDS) comes into effect on July 1 this year.
