India's First IEO Gives Local Community a Much-Needed Breath of Fresh Air

Despite regulatory uncertainty and banking restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank of India, WazirX - the Indian cryptocurrency exchange recently acquired by Binance - launched its WRX coin through an initial exchange offering on Binance Launchpad. On Feb. 5, 2020, WRX coin became available for live trading on Binance.

"This is the much needed good news for the Indian community because from the last two years, with the bear market and the banking restrictions, Indian crypto ecosystem needed a huge morale booster."

Shetty started WazirX in 2017 and launched an auto-matching peer-to-peer engine-based platform in June 2018, a few days before the banking ban from the Reserve Bank of India came into effect.

Following the bank's actions, many Indian exchanges such as Koinex, Coindelta, CryptoKart, Unocoin, BuyUCoin and Coinsecure shut down their operations.

The peer-to-peer model became popular among Indian traders.

"In many countries, banking is an issue or banking APIs are slow and expensive. We have the plan to launch WazirX Peer-to-Peer platform in such countries to solve crypto trading-related problems."

The Indian crypto and blockchain community is working hard to build positive sentiments in India.

After the banking ban imposed by the Reserve Bank of India, the community founded several initiatives at different levels, including multiple seminars, meetups and conferences for industry, government bodies and youth.

Contributing to the space are programs like GenesisBlock and Unwind, which discuss possible implementation of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the Indian ecosystem.

"We'll see more projects getting listed. More companies will come to India and we welcome every player who supports the growth of the Indian ecosystem."