These days, if you turn on the TV, there is no escaping the flood of advertisements urging you to invest in cryptocurrencies. Everyone seems to be busy getting rich from bitcoin and other cryptos. A host of crypto-exchanges have attracted funding from global investors and are promising the moon to retail investors. But these crypto-exchanges themselves are not comparable to a conventional stock exchange such as the BSE or the NSE, which bear some of the risks of a trade, whereas the crypto-exchanges don’t.
However, the government has allowed this sector to mushroom in a regulatory vacuum. How real are the risks for investors putting their money into an unregulated ‘asset class’? When is a regulatory regime likely to kick in? And how likely is it that we can transition to a regulated ecosystem without some pain to retail investors?
We seek to answer these questions and more in this episode.
Guest: Vivek Kaul, business journalist and author who has written extensively on the recent crypto-currency boom in India
Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu