Jonathan Stacke - Bitcoin in India
bitcoinnews:
Jonathan Stacke writes on Bitcoin in India for his latest article on The Genesis Block (@TheGenesisBlock). Excerpts:
"With talk of inflation and capital controls familiar to the bitcoin community, one might think Indian citizens would be jumping at the opportunity to adopt the digital currency, yet the hurdles to wide-scale bitcoin proliferation in India may be significant for the foreseeable future. While demand for gold has grown in India, the multiple applications it offers culturally and industrially in addition to acting as an alternative store of wealth may mean that such demand does not translate to bitcoin."
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"[A correlation exists] between bitcoin adoption and internet penetration in a given country. India, with just 12.6% of its citizens having internet access, has the sixth lowest internet penetration of the 100 largest countries. Despite that fact, the size of the total Indian population – more than 1.2 billion – makes India the third largest internet-using population in the world, with 150 million users, behind only China and the US."
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"It is possible to buy and sell bitcoin through a number of websites including buysellbitco.in and there does appear to be a healthy LocalBitcoins market."
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"Not to be overlooked is India’s mobile phone penetration of 71%, or approximately 900 million total users. […] only 44 million Indians are smartphone subscribers."
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"M-PESA, the mobile payment system that has changed the lives of millions in Kenya recently rolled out in India. […] If mobile payment systems like these gain traction in India as they have in Africa, acceptance of digital currency would prove to be a less significant hurdle."
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"India had the highest remittance volume in the world in 2011 with $58 billion, or 3.1% of GDP, according to the World Bank."
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"Forward-thinking companies like Buttercoin have recently stepped in to apply the potential of bitcoin to these markets […]"
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"The Reserve Bank of India has stated that it does not immediately intend to regulate bitcoin, but their historic actions indicate that may change soon enough […]"
- https://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-in-india-drivers-and-barriers-to-adoption
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=288709.0 (Further discussion of this article)
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Benson Samuel - Bitcoin In India?
Benson Samuel (@BensonSamuel) blogs on Bitcoin from Bangalore. His latest post introduces his readers to the Bitcoin ecosystem and describes some of the opportunities and challenges for Bitcoin in India, specifically. Excerpts:
Several new exchanges are being setup for India, and it is only a matter of time, before we can have a robust environment supporting Bitcoins in an open marketplace.
Several Indians participate in forums on Tor and have started engaging in open discussions about betterment and open business.
As long as there is prohibition of an item of need or desire, there will remain a Black Market. As long as this continues, Bitcoin will have value and will continue to grow. Bitcoin will replace or become the main currency in lands where modern banking has failed. It will remain a steadfast channel of alternative commerce where the need is.
Inspired Indians have taken up the challenge to reshape the way we have banked for decades.
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Gaurav Ghosh: Trust and Bitcoin
The English-language Indian daily newspaper The Economics Times published an article by Gaurav S Ghosh on Bitcoin. Excerpts:
But why would anyone trust a virtual currency that was nothing but a few lines of code generated anonymously by a process indecipherable to a non-expert audience.
There are huge inequities with respect to the bitcoin mining process, whereby early miners were able to mine much larger quantities of bitcoins than newer miners.
The author makes an argument that Bitcoin cannot be trusted and uses Zimbabwean inflation as an example — a delicious irony as the ZMD was ruined as the result of inflation and Bitcoin’s raison d’être is its protection from that very same occurrance.
Bitcoin never promised that those who were speculating in bitcoins at bubble levels would incur no losses. There was however the expectation that the amount of bitcoin currency issued is limited and that it would occur at a predeterminted rate (roughly 7,200 bitcoins per day at current levels). That promise is encoded in the software and enforced by massive amounts of computing power provided by those mining. That promise has been kept. Trust that this system can continue to meet this expectation has not lessened but has strengthened in the past few months.
The author also writes that the when a rapid increase in the money supply occurs that prices would increase afterward is just “one of many competing theories of how the economy works” so at least he is clear on his bias. Sadly the readers will need to learn from elsewhere the benefits that Bitcoin offers.
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Another BTC/INR Market Opens - Free Trading
Bitcoin-Central.net is an exchange that has been operating since 2010, which is long in the tooth as far as Bitcoin exchanges go. The exchange recently added a INR deposit method and operates a BTC/INR market — the second exchange to now serve those wishing to buy and sell Bitcoins with the rupee.
Bitcoin-Central exchange has no trading fees. Adding funds to the exchange account involves sending a bank wire transfer to the exchange’s bank account with ICICI (fee applies). Withdrawal to any bank in India is available as well (fee applies).
Support from the exchange is available by e-mail from: [email protected]
The exchange offers either Google or Yubikey multifactor authentication methods which can lessen the security risks significantly compared to transacting against exchanges without these methods.
Support fort the INR currency was just recently added so if the market follows the pattern that other new markets followed then first will appear some bids and offers that are far apart (a wide spread). Then sporadic trades will likely occur before the market starts to function with competitive offers on one or both sides and eventually an efficient market becomes the result.
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First BTC/INR Trades Booked on TradeHill
Indian Rupees (INR) are now being used to buy bitcoins and bitcoins are now being used to buy Rupees.
INR funds may be deposited with the TradeHill exchange from any Indian bank. Once funds have been received, a bid may be placed on the BTC/INR market and when there is a sell order willing to sell at that price the buyer’s order will be filled.
Those selling bitcoins for Rupees can then withdraw their INR funds at that the exchange to any bank in India as well.
TradeHill has been operating for over month now but these INR trades occuring this week were the first to execute through its BTC/INR market.
When the BTC/INR market firms up, this market will likely see a fair amount of activity from those who hold Liberty Reserve currency and wish to withdraw those funds as INRs. TradeHill also has a BTC/LR (LRUSD) market so converting from LRUSD to INR will involve two trades. The BTC/LR market has been favorable to those holding Liberty Reserve — enough so that even with the wide spread using TradeHill could become one of the least expensive methods for withdrawing LRUSD to INRs.
After PayPal this month added further restrictions for its customers in India, both Bitcoin and Liberty Reserve will likely get a boost.
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How many bitcoins will 1,000 INR buy?
BTCRate.com provides a tool for converting between bitcoins and Indian Rupees.
The tool uses the BTC/USD market rate from the Mt. Gox exchange and then uses the USD/INR exchange rate from XE.
When this post was composed (May 24, 2011) 1,000 INR will buy a little more than 3 BTCs.
- INR per 1 BTC (BTC/INR)
- BTC per 1 INR
The SI unit for a one thousandth of a bitcoin (0.001 BTC) is MilliBitcoin though there is not yet a widely used name to refer to unit smaller than a bitcoin.
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