Where Is Cryptocurrency Today?

Cryptocurrency is slowly being accepted in India. Garrick Hileman, Research Head, Blockchain.com, tells us more in this interaction

- Aanchal Ghatak

How has been India’s reaction overall, towards cryptocurrency?

The reaction has been positive in terms of demand and interest amongst Indians everyday in cryptocurrency. However, access to cryptocurrency has been limited due to some regulatory uncertainty than in other markets, where there has been more regulatory clarity and more opportunities for entrepreneurs to build bridges to the Indian market.

Can we, in future, see iCo replacing IPO as a mode of raising money? As many companies took a route of having an initial coin offering, rather than IPO?

Well, I don’t think the ICO is ready to replace the IPO. The ICO phenomenon is still relatively new. And, not every company or project needs a token, which is generally an important component of the ICO phenomenon.

However, as companies begin to tokenise their equity and other parts of their businesses, we may see more initial token offerings. So, an ICO is a new term that we might start using to reflect, that the digital tokens represent more than just currency for payments, they can represent as an ownership stake in real estate or even a stock, a traditional equity but in a digital token format.

Suppose, if everything works out from RBI and you get a chance to onboard a leading bank, what challenges you might face?

It really varies in terms of the amount of time to onboard a bank, based on the bank, the market, and the regulatory environment. One of the things is, we do not have a payment gateway in India yet ourselves and that’s a goal for blockchain.com. We found in our experience, going from different markets is that it’s very market dependent in terms of how quickly we are bringing in a payment partner, or making partner -- how long does it take.