 "Will Crypto Bubble Grow Or Burst Amidst The Bitcoin Rise?")
A government bill on cryptocurrencies is causing jitters, but several investors in India are confident of the digital tokens' potential. People still have not sold off their holdings, reckoning the bill will give them time to sell off their holdings in a manner that does not affect the market.
Business Standard asked a bunch of retail investors about how much they hold and what is their plan for government policy. Comments below:
Amit Kumar Dash, advertising professional in Delhi
Crypto holding: Rs 7,500
Preferred platform: Coinswitch Kuber
For Dash, it was the lure of the unknown. Bitcoin prices would rocket periodically and he had seen people make money. He wanted to try it out; the important being “try”. He bet Rs7,500—a small amount that he will not regret losing—to understand the ecosystem.
He has holdings in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Dopecoin. The last one is an experimental token launched to compensate people for social media likes and shares, and was popularized on Reddit. “It started off as a joke. It is very cheap,” says Dash. Then one day Elon Musk made a post about it and it’s value went from “70 paise to Rs5, and I went in.”
“Crypto, for me, is definitely not something I am hoping will give me assured returns. The price fluctuates all so often, and “I just want to make some cash out of it and, you know, buy a new phone or something,” says Dash, who puts his real savings in mutual funds. “I began studying this space 7-8 months ago, did some research into which tokens have grown in price and how,” says Dash, adding that the other tailwind is the ease of investing.
Apps like CoinSwitch take only two minutes to setup and you can buy through any UPI client like Google Pay or Paytm. “This wasn’t the case 3-4 years ago.”
Archit Aggarwal, blockchain entrepreneur and consultant
Crypto holding: Rs 60 lakh; In 2018, made 300 per cent for Rs 8 lakh investment
Preferred app: CoinDCX (India), and Kraken (Global)
Aggarwal is not a retail investor. He and some friends in 2017 set up Ethereum mining operations in Daman & Diu; the business continues but he has existed. He built up sizable personal holding in Ethereum and other currencies. He holds 50-60 Ethereum, which today are worth approximately Rs60 lakhs.
He also got lucky with Bitcoin. He initially didn’t invest much but when India banned cryptocurrencies in 2018 he moved holdings in other coins to bitcoins, and then sold off sometime in the 2020-peak. “I realized bitcoin will have a long-term play and acceptance in India, no matter-what,” says Aggarwal, 30. He had about Rs8 lakh worth of Bitcoin, which he sold for Rs24 lakh when the price was around $24,000 a piece.
He consults with firms on blockchain technology, AI-ML and coin offerings, and has holding in a bunch of coins, but mainly stablecoin called USDT, or Tether. USDT is backed to US dollar, and is also priced around $1/piece. Aggarwal says USDT is “prevalently used” by large scale shopkeepers and wholesalers in places like Croffed Market and Chandni Chowk as a means to pay exporters in China and elsewhere. “They straight-away save 7-8 percent in margins. They operate through an association which facilitates crypto-transfers on behalf of all the merchants in an area. It works on trust.”
Aggarwal says, while it looks likely, bitcoin and crypto currencies can’t be banned technically. People will either trade P2P, where sophisticated global platforms exist, or just keep training in digital tokens as such. Currently other tokens on his watch-list are: Binance BNB, Unicas CAS, Matic Coin (Indian).
Narendra Pal Singh Khurana, founder of an event management company
Crypto holding: undisclosed
Preferred platform: Tron wallet, Cashaa
“Those who put money in Bitcoin around 2017 made handsome returns,” says Narendra Pal Singh Khurana, 40, echoing the sentiment which has driven majority of Indians towards crypto-currencies. Khurana runs a Delhi- and US-based events management company and was drawn to Bitcoin by friends. He is uncomfortable disclosing how much he owns or owned but said he had both “wins and losses on bets”.
Bitcoin and blockchain had such an impact on Khurana that he has spent the last couple of years figuring out if he can infuse them in his own business. Without revealing details, he says he has created internal infrastructure for something called “Party coins” which people will use to pay for parties and events. “Covid has obviously put brakes on our plans but I have it ready and have also struck partnerships with prominent events and Bollywood bodies,” says Khurana. “I am waiting for regulatory clarity.”
Siddharth Dutta, photographer
Crypto Holding: Rs 2 lakh in Ethereum and Dent, Bitcoin, Polka Dot
Preferred app: WazirX and Binance
Siddharth Dutta has moved from investing in plain crypto-tokens to experimental tokens like Dent and Polka Dot. Dutta says his entire family of four have invested in crypto-currencies in 2020, when coronavirus struck the world.
“We are a crypto family,” says Dutta. He started reading up about it only last year and picked up a few bets. “I am not sure if its right or wrong, but people are making money. There is big potential in the technology, so why not?” He quotes the example of Ethereum which grew from Rs9,000 a piece to somewhere around Rs1.5 lakh now. In fact, he thinks India should think about creating a bitcoin and crypto-currency reserve.
Dutta sees crypto-currencies as an asset class with multi-year horizon. According to him, at least Bitcoin and Ethereum will be around for many years and will continue to have acceptance. Even if India goes for a ban, which seems likely at the moment, “I don’t think the ban will sustain past one year. Even if it does people will just hold their tokens, which is not a bad thing.”
