Tag: WazirX

A Beginner’s Guide To Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT)

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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It can be challenging to keep up with the dazzling array of new information on the blockchain that keeps coming at us. From the highs and lows of Bitcoin pricing to a meme-inspired Dogecoin that’s suddenly turned into the best investment of 2021 and so much more, you’d be forgiven for missing out on an important piece of blockchain asset called non-fungible tokens (NFTs)that has taken the artistic world in particular by storm. Here’s everything you need to know about NFTs, told from a layman’s perspective.

What Is NFT?

Non-fungible sounds like a word you may not have heard before so let’s break that down first. A fungible asset is anything that can be exchanged with units, like currency for example. You could exchange a 10 INR bank note with two INR 5 coins that would have the same value.

NFTs, on the other hand, cannot be exchanged for anything else. Instead, these can be compared to the graduation certificate with your name on it and belongs only to you. When someone buys an NFT, they have possession of that item even if it doesn’t belong to them physically. This could be a painting, a video clip or a popular tweet, or even a digital coupon.

NFTs are widely being touted as the digital alternative to collectibles, especially in the art and pop culture universe.

How Does It Work – 

Okay, so maybe you’re still not clear about NFTs. Let’s try to understand it through its application further.

As a buyer of NFT, you have the entire range of digital assets to choose from, be it video games, digital artwork, logos, photos, animation, music, video clips, and more. Getting an NFT basically leads you into the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency as it relies on the decentralised power of blockchain technology to verify its authenticity.

In effect, buying an NFT means purchasing a public proof of ownership over a specific digital asset that makes it virtually impossible to hack into. This is because NFTs are protected by the same robust framework that powers cryptocurrencies.

The result? When you buy an NFT, you get a digital asset with a certificate of authenticity plus legal rights all rolled into one.

More On NFTs –

First things first, you might own a digital asset, but that doesn’t make it difficult for anyone else to replicate or pirate. The NFT gives you ownership of the media file in question, unlike pirated versions, where they can make copies and enjoy the digital asset in any way they feel free.

Also, a particular cryptocurrency has the same price at the same time. However, the price of NFTs doesn’t follow the same rule and can be arbitrarily set higher or lower, depending on its demand.

Second, most NFTs are currently part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or Dogecoin, and its blockchain can store extra information that supports NFTs. Other cryptocurrencies are joining the bandwagon as well but the gold standard today is still Ethereum.

Just a day ago, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced the launch of its own NFT marketplace in June 2021. The marketplace will be powered by the company’s blockchain infrastructure, Binance Smart Chain, that comes with a lower fee structure where creators get to pocket 90% of the total sales amount. This has the potential to shake up the nascent NFT world.

If you’re feeling left out of all the action, don’t worry. You, too, can be a part of the growing NFT movement in India by registering yourself on WazirX’s NFT marketplace.

NFTs also aren’t sold on cryptocurrency exchanges such as WazirX. Instead, you will find them on dedicated digital marketplaces such as WazirX NFT Marketplace, Openbazaar for example.

Popular NFTs To Date –

Artist Beeple’s first 5,000 “Everydays,” a series of digital drawings he had been creating since May 1, 2007 holds the record for being the most expensive NFT to date after selling for a whopping $69 million. Other notable NFTs sold so far include Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million, Rick and Morty’s ‘The Best I Could Do’ artwork for over $1 million.

As you can see, just a simple introduction to NFTs has a wealth of information for you to dive into. We’ll be back with more detailed stories from the world of Cryptocurrencies and NFTs soon. Until then, we hope you read and share this piece with your friends.

This is a partnered post.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Sitharaman’s comment on cryptocurrency is a positive sign: Wazir-X’s Nischal Shetty

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Nischal Shetty, founder and CEO of Wazir-X, on Monday said Finance Minister Niramala Sitharaman’s comment that India is looking at crypto is a very positive sign for the industry overall because until now.

“There was not enough clarity on what exactly some of the statements meant that were being circulated around and now we have more clarity,” he said.

There are multiple classifications of cryptocurrency and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) comes under currency, he said.

“Traditional systems already have people with years of experience into them whereas the crypto ecosystem is new, so it is like a level-playing field for the young generation and they find this to be a very good way to build a career out of it.”

“We have over 10 million people in India. You can see the size of the market, it is a very young population of the country which is going towards this as a way for them to learn because it is very exciting. 22-28 years old ones are the largest audience in this sector,” Shetty said.

“In the last few months, India has seen tremendous growth in this sector. The demand of bitcoin in India is way higher than the amount of supply that is available in the market,” he mentioned.

For more, watch the video…

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Demystifying Crypto: Here’s What Everyone Must Know About The 21st Century Currency

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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This is a partnered post.

If there’s one word that’s been making headlines in 2021, it’s got to be Crypto. Whether it’s the curious case of Dogecoin or the jaw-dropping prices reached by Bitcoin as it crossed the trillion-dollar market capitalisation a few days ago, we’ve been held in thrall by all things Crypto.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has been tweeting about cryptos and has created more awareness and price fluctuations in digital assets than one would imagine. Understanding cryptos is not that simple, we must say but it’s also not difficult once you begin a deep dive. So, let’s do exactly that and dive into the myriad world of Crypto, separate the wheat from the chaff and determine where India stands on this new-age technology.

The Desi (Dis)Connect – 

Let’s start with India and its mixed reaction to Crypto. While big investors such as Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and government bodies say they wouldn’t touch crypto currencies with a bargepole, there are still many Indian investors who have put money into Bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the most famous and most favoured crypto currencies across the nation.

India has upturned a banking ban on Crypto trading in March 2020, but the government has openly spoken about bringing in its own cryptocurrency while banning others in the as-yet unknown Crypto and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021.

We’ll have to wait and see how the Bill shapes up before we can comment on it but initial signs are not too encouraging for cryptos in India so far even though a ban on them was lifted just last year by the Supreme Court,

It also shows a disconnect between the authorities and savvy Crypto investors who understand that the future belongs to IoT and blockchain technologies. The government can actually jump into these new-age technologies much faster if it regulates Crypto trading instead of banning it.

We’ve all seen how connected the world has been through technology throughout the pandemic. If Zoom can help a company work with employees from anywhere in the world, is it really too much to think that Crypto can help current banking systems to transact with any other bank in the world more efficiently?

Most legal experts and investors feel that banning Crypto is a bad idea and will only lead to the rise of an underground black market. It would also hurt the image of Digital India and may also prompt many tech giants to rethink their position.

The Need To Learn – 

There has never been a better time than now to learn about Crypto, especially with companies like Tesla investing $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and announcing they will support Bitcoin payments for their electric cars in the near future. Even traditional companies like Mastercard have announced plans to look into how to support Crypto while PayPal now allows customers to hold Bitcoin in their digital wallets.

With Crypto technology getting more widespread acceptance, it’s important to look at digital assets from a holistic perspective rather than just see it from an Indian angle. After all, Crypto is a global asset with a robust trading activity in them.

Unless you understand what and how cryptos work, it’s difficult to comprehend the scale and magnitude of how these digital assets plan to leverage blockchain technology in areas such as health, management, governance and finance among others.

The Solution Providers – 

Thankfully, there’s a solution at hand aimed at demystifying the world of Crypto. WazirX, a Crypto trading platform and CNBC-TV18 present Crypto: Digital assets of the future, a show to educate investors and bust myths around Crypto. WazirX believes that Crypto is a trillion-dollar tech industry and India can benefit by way of new jobs, inflow of capital, creating tech unicorns, and leading the world to the new financial internet.

The weekly shows, to be aired on Saturday and Sunday at 2PM, is the place to learn more about the new financial internet and its future in India.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Smart Money: The rise and rise of bitcoin

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

The biggest headline this week was the meteoric rise of the Bitcoin which continues to break records.

Bitcoin has hit a record high of USD 37,000 this week. Is it still worth a buy? Is it legal? What are the risks? How do you trade it? Is it a scam?

Nishcal Shetty, the founder of Wazir X, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange trading platform, decodes the breath-taking journey of cryptocurrencies and answer all those questions in your head about the bitcoin on CNBC-TV18’s special show Smart Money.

He also gives a complete end-to-end explainer on this mysterious asset class.

This show also maps the journey of the bitcoin from 2011 when it was one dollar.

For full show, watch video…

To watch other videos in this series, click on the Smart Money tab below.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

P2P crypto trading: Back to the basics, for the next wave of adoption

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

One of the core principles behind the creation of Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was to facilitate peer-to-peer electronic transactions. The intent was to allow people within the network to transact freely without the intervention of a third party. For this system, it had to stay true to the ethos of decentralisation.

P2P platform acts as a marketplace that connects interested buyers and sellers to transact with each other.

How does a P2P platform work?

Buyers and sellers place their requests on the platform, and interested parties can either match these requests or set up their own requests. The platform acts as an escrow and locks the digital assets of the seller so that the funds are inaccessible to either party (to prevent failure of execution). Once an order is matched, the buyer sends the fiat payment to the seller (USD, EUR, INR, etc), and once the seller confirms receipt the digital assets are unlocked and released to the buyer. This makes hacks on P2P platforms virtually non-existent as funds are distributed and not held on centralised servers. At any point of time, the escrow is also not holding huge amounts of crypto and this disincentivises hackers.

A P2P platform is not much different from eBay.

Advantages of P2P platform:

1. No centralised entity or middlemen: Most people in crypto are aware of Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, WazirX India (now owned by Binance) and these are centralised exchanges that operate as corporates. While some of these have been quite successful, they are considered anti-thesis to bitcoin’s original ethos of decentralisation. Typically, P2P platforms are very lean corporates and the platform can continue operating without any intervention from the entity.
2. Control of assets: On P2P platforms, the users can maintain complete control over their assets. The platform offers either an escrow or a multi-sig wallet to protect the buyer. While one can withdraw from centralised exchanges as well, most users prefer leaving their assets on the exchange. The ethos of crypto, however, dictates, “not your keys, not your coin”, ie. if your assets are on an exchange then you are susceptible to any hacks or internal malpractices at the exchange.
3. More privacy: More and more exchanges are adopting stringent KYC checks to conform with regulations. All exchanges that offer fiat gateways (USD, EUR, INR, etc.) have to compulsorily undertake KYC as they are handling regulated currencies. P2P platforms, however, do not handle any fiat currencies and therefore, are typically not subject to the same level of KYC rigour. However, this is changing, as seen by the Finnish regulator’s insistence on Localbitcoins having to undertake KYC on their users.
4. Greater adoption: P2P platforms do not need to have bank accounts as their transactions happen between two people. Therefore, P2P platforms can operate and proliferate in almost all jurisdictions and provide an on-ramp into crypto.

Challenges of P2P platform:

1. Liquidity: Centralised exchanges provide a lot of liquidity on their platforms and any user can utilise this liquidity to execute their orders. P2P platforms do not offer such liquidity and will typically scale slower than centralised exchanges.
2. Optionality: P2P platforms offer only market orders and similar functions. However centralised exchanges offer limit orders, stop losses, APIs, etc. A high frequency trader will usually prefer centralised exchange over a P2P platform.
3. Trust: Even though P2P platforms do not custody assets (except for escrow), there could be instances of buyers or sellers looking to game the system. For instance, a seller could claim to not having received the fiat, or a buyer may claim to have sent the wire without actually having sent it. In such cases, the P2P platform acts as a mediator and takes the final decision based on proofs provided by both sides.

In the recent times, users have switched to P2P for better trade placement and competitive pricing, and since centralised exchanges are being hacked (even Binance, the largest exchange, was hacked earlier this year). Since buyers and sellers are actively searching for users to match their order, a third party is not needed in peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading.

Future of P2P trading

P2P platforms are more reliable as central dependency is almost eliminated. When one thinks of trading cryptocurrency, many people imagine complex charts, crypto jargons and conventional exchanges. Yet many are still not aware of an easier way to trade cryptocurrency that doesn’t involve any of these complicated features and is used by millions of people around the world, every day — P2P.

These P2P platforms roughly provide crypto accesses to almost 250+ countries.

With stringent regulations, banking issues, and high overheads of operating exchanges, P2P could take up a lot of slack in the system and pave the way for the next wave of adoption in this space.

Indian scenario

Ever since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) banned financial institutions from providing any kind of services to users dealing in cryptocurrencies in February 2018, many local crypto exchanges have pivoted and begun offering ‘P2P’ trading to their users. This is, however, not the typical P2P trading offered globally, as the exchanges have tied up with HNIs who allow users to convert INR into USDT that the users can then use to buy any other cryptocurrencies on the exchange. It is unclear how the exchanges manage the two-way liquidity on this conversion. The most popular Indian platforms are WazirX (recently acquired by Binance), Bitbns and Giottus.

Since the banking ban, global P2P platforms have witnessed an uptrend in trading volumes in India. In the last week of October this year, Peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading platforms like LocalBittcoins and Paxful recorded an all-time high for BTC/INR, around Rs 83 million was traded on LocalBitcoins compared to Rs 53 million on Paxful. Some other popular global names in this space are HodlHodl and BisQ. P2P has similarly done well in other countries where the government has not shown active confidence in crypto.

The next wave of cryptocurrency adoption

We at Tandem have just launched our own (traditional) P2P mobile application that enables users to transact BTC with 28+ local currencies on the go. With #TradeOnTandem we are setting for wider adoption and awareness in crypto.

It is a clear sign that over-the-counter and P2P trades are becoming more common in India and other jurisdictions, and this appears to be the next wave of cryptocurrency adoption.

Prashanth Swaminathan is an alumnus from IIT Guwahati and IIM Calcutta, who spent 10 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley London. Along with esteemed advisors within this space and crypto, he is currently building a global product called ‘Tandem’ that aims at higher adoption of digital assets.

 Read his columns here. 

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India’s move to take on the crypto ecosystem — what will be its impact on the economy?

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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As the price of bitcoin crossed $13,000 and the global crypto ecosystem was expecting this to be further validation of a much-anticipated bull-run in this space, India got yet another rude shock with one of its leading cryptocurrency exchanges Koinex notifying its customers that it will be shutting operations. This is yet another example of India moving against the global tide in digital assets by offering no clarity to its ecosystem and effectively forcing them to shut shop.

Ailing exchanges

Koinex was generating volumes of $265 million a day at their peak in December 2017, and this is now down to under $5,000 (as per Coin Market Cap), a trend symptomatic of all Indian crypto exchanges. As primary revenue source for exchanges is transaction fees, going must be really tough. In the last 12 months, multiple exchanges have either shut shop or have ventured abroad to look for revenues. Unocoin, Koinex, Coindelta and KoinOK have all partially or fully shutdown, while Zebpay and WazirX have launched international operations.

RBI banking ban

The key reason for this state of Indian exchanges is the banking ban introduced by the RBI in April 2018. This ban directed Indian banks to stop holding bank accounts for entities handling crypto, such as exchanges. This completely disabled the fiat to crypto on-ramp, debilitating the ecosystem. While the move was not entirely unexpected given the unregulated nature of these assets, it was anticipated that this will evolve into a regulatory framework under which the ecosystem could operate. It has been 15 months since, and while the case challenging the validity of the ban rumbles on at the Supreme Court (a classic dialogue from the movie Damini comes to mind!), there has been no regulatory clarity and the entire ecosystem is therefore in a limbo. To their credit, some exchanges, including Koinex, tried to get around the ban by launching P2P services, but this was always difficult to scale.

Why do we need exchanges?

Exchanges offer a critical role in the evolution of any asset class. They bring price discovery to assets, they are the most direct and transparent source for people to invest, and they show investors that there is ample liquidity for them to dilute or increase their stakes. While Indian projects may or may not be able to list on international exchanges, they would have been certainly listed on Indian exchanges as this was the only fiat-to-crypto on ramp for Indian residents. Therefore an indirect and catastrophic impact of the banking ban is the strangulation of Indian cryptopreneurs who want to raise funding through ICOs and list such projects within India. Investors will stay away from such projects as there is no price discovery or liquidity for their investments and therefore eventually entrepreneurs will move abroad, thereby costing the Indian residents wonderful investment opportunities, and the Indian exchequer significant tax revenues.

Way forward

If the rumours are to be believed, India is strongly considering a ban on cryptocurrencies. If this is indeed the case, I cannot begin to express how tragic and myopic this will be, and how we will be perceived in the global eyes. While the government on one hand wants to establish a Digital India, on the other it is not setting the right example by delaying or banning cryptocurrencies, a form of digital assets. There is no denying that the crypto space has a lot of issues to resolve, and there are people who may need to be questioned and potentially convicted for committing scams, but this is a natural evolution of any unregulated industry. The obvious way forward is to come up with a regulatory framework and allow the industry to sustain and thrive under such a framework.

Prashanth Swaminathan is a graduate from IIT Guwahati and IIM Calcutta, and spent 10 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley London before setting up an EU cryptocurrency exchange, XDAT.

Also Read: Facebook’s Libra is not really a cryptocurrency and it faces huge hurdles, including in India. Here’s why

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow