Mumbai Mirror - Bitcoin Arrives
Ankit Ajmera (@TvventyOne)’s article, published in the Mumbai Mirror, describes Bitcoin’s presence in India. Excerpts:
The Reserve Bank of India, for instance, has not yet formulated regulations to govern trading or profits generated from Bitcoins.
The only time Bitcoins will come under the purview of law is if a case of fraud is reported, following which cops can then initiate action against the fraudulent party.
There have been an estimated 29,400 downloads of Bitcoin wallets from Indian IP addresses. There’s the possibility that one person has downloaded more than one wallet.
- https://bit.ly/19NOOZ9
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=304384.0 (Further discussion of the 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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Why has Bitcoin so far gotten zero traction in India?
Forum user minorman on BitcoinTalk.org describes in a post a number of attributes that would indicate Bitcoin should be starting to gain a little interest in India but to-date, so little progress has been made.
minorman writes in support of the open question:
- India has more programmers/computer people than the rest of the world combined.
- People in India love tangible assets (gold/silver)
- The Rupee is crashing and the gold price has just hit an all time high in Rupees.
- 108 people in India have no bank account or otherwise access to financial services.
- Millions of Indians live outside India and send money to/from relatives in India.
- Unlike China, India has no “great firewall”.
The forum board has a restriction the limits new users to a specific newbie forum as an approach to limit posting of duplicate questions and to bring trolling to manage levels on the other boards once a new user “graduates” (or gets whitelisted) out of the newbie forum. This is an unfortunate hurdle that the moderators felt needed to be put in place but the equivalent of “forum vandilism” that had been occurring had made the boards unusable for everyone without this restriction.
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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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TradeHill - Bank Transfer - India / INR Funds, Then Buy Bitcoins
The first Bitcoin exchange to accept deposits using funds using a domestic bank transfer from any Indan bank is TradeHill.
Along with becoming the first exchange to offer the ability to buy bitcoins with India / INR bank transfers, the exchange also was the first to accept bank transfers for Chile / CLN and Peru / PEN. The exchange also accepts international USD bank transfers as well.
The exchange also provides a number of bitcoin cash out methods, including withdrawing to PayPal, to Amazon Payments, or to virtual instruments such as prepaid debit Mastercards, gift cards and game cards.
- TradeHill web site
- Article on Bitcoin wiki
- Overview on Bitcoin Money
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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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