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The world’s largest fintech conference just concluded in Mumbai with more than 100,000 attendees, more than 800 speakers and one glaring omission: any meaningful discussion on cryptocurrencies or stablecoins, despite Bitcoin hitting an all-time high above $125,000 the same week.
At the three-day Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai that began on October 7, organizers asked speakers to avoid “political, cryptographic, religious or personal remarks on stage or onsite,” Reuters reported, citing a document with guidelines for speakers.
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India tends not to create legislation to regulate the crypto sector, in stark contrast to the approach taken by Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, which have actively courted cryptocurrency and stablecoin businesses.
Instead of adopting digital currencies, Indian regulators have focused on the country’s central bank’s digital currency, called e-rupee, with the Reserve Bank of India launching pilot projects for tokenization of deposits and a sandbox for fintechs. More than 50 products were showcased at the event, including global wallet platform PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and biometric authentication for payments, but crypto remained noticeably absent.
“Political ambivalence has a chilling effect on the development of commercial use cases for stablecoins in India,” founder of Delhi-based Black Dot Public Policy Advisors. Mandar Kagade told Reuters.
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The figures convincingly reveal the issues at stake. US dollar stablecoins have accumulated a market cap of over $300 billion, while the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies has soared to over $4 trillion. Meanwhile, India’s fintech sector raised just $3.5 billion last year, the lowest since 2020 and a far cry from 2021’s peak of $9.2 billion.
At least six industry executives have said that while entering the crypto sector could offer new lines of business and help attract investment, there is little appetite in the absence of regulatory blessing.
“There is reason to be quite cautious about stablecoins,” CEO of Reserve Bank of India Innovation Hub Sahil Kini » said while addressing the October 7 session. “I don’t think that kind of position changes overnight.”
