Coinbase Global, a cryptocurrency exchange with its headquarters in the United States, announced on Tuesday that it has registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of India, enabling it to provide cryptocurrency trading services in the nation.
TakeAway Points:
- Coinbase Global has registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), allowing it to offer crypto trading services in the country.
- The company plans to launch its initial retail services later this year and roll out additional investments and products thereafter.
- Elon Musk’s social media platform X experienced several outages on Monday, according to user reports on Downdetector.
Coinbase to offer crypto trading services in India
Coinbase said it plans to launch its initial retail services later this year and roll out additional investments and products thereafter, but did not disclose a specific timeline.
Coinbase‘s entry into India comes at a time when interest in the asset class has soared in the country, with many young Indians dabbling in crypto and flocking to trading academies in the hopes of supplementing their regular incomes.
Other crypto exchanges that currently operate in India include CoinDCX, Binance, and KuCoin.
“India represents one of the most exciting market opportunities in the world today, and we’re proud to deepen our investment here in full compliance with local regulations,” said John O’Loghlen, Coinbase’s regional managing director for Asia Pacific.
India requires virtual digital asset service providers, such as crypto exchanges, to register with the FIU as a reporting entity and comply with obligations mandated under the country’s anti-money laundering rules.
While the country levies a 30% tax on crypto trading gains, among the highest globally, it is yet to outline regulations for the asset class, which has been in the spotlight since Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election last year.
India is reviewing its stance on cryptocurrencies due to global regulatory shifts and influenced by recent U.S. policy changes, a senior official told Reuters last month.
X Experience Outage On The Platform
Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X, blamed an exceptionally potent hack for the platform’s sporadic outages on Monday.
“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved,” Musk said in a post on X earlier Monday.
He did not clarify exactly what he meant by “a lot of resources,” and his comments drew skepticism from cybersecurity specialists, who pointed out that attacks of this nature — called denials of service — have repeatedly been executed by small groups or individuals.
X faced intermittent outages, according to Downdetector, restricting 39,021 users in the U.S. from accessing the platform at its peak at 10 a.m. ET. By 5 p.m., there were reports of the service being down for roughly 1,500 users.
A source in the internet infrastructure industry said X had been hit by several waves of denial of service beginning around 9:45 UTC. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity, as the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Denial of service works by overwhelming targeted websites with rogue traffic. Such attacks are not necessarily sophisticated but they can cause significant disruption.
Musk later said in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow the cyberattack came from IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.
The industry source disputed Musk’s account, saying that large chunks of the rogue traffic bombarding X could be traced back to IP addresses in the United States, Vietnam, Brazil, and other countries, and that the amount of rogue traffic coming directly from Ukraine was “insignificant.”
In any case, denial-of-service attacks are notoriously hard to trace back to their authors, and the IP addresses involved rarely provide any meaningful insight into who was behind them.
Musk has joined U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he serves as an adviser, in criticizing Ukraine’s continued efforts to fight off a Russian invasion. Musk said on Sunday that Ukraine’s front line “would collapse” without his Starlink satellite communications service, though he said he would not cut off Ukraine’s access to it.
