DeFi token fever for India’s crypto investors

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Last Updated on 28 September 2020 by CryptoTips.eu

Jeroen Kok

Jeroen is one of the lead copywriters on Cryptotips.eu and discusses all recent events in the crypto market. This includes news updates, but also price analyzes and more. He developed his passion for cryptocurrency during the bull run in 2017. He has learned a lot since then. The combination of cryptocurrency and creative writing is perfect for Jeroen and an excellent way to share his knowledge with a wide audience. Find me on LinkedIn / jeroen@cryptotips.eu
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One of the best-selling books of this year is Caste, the origins of our discontent by author Isabel Wilkerson. It is the follow-up to her Warmth of other suns of last year and claims that the US’s class society is loosely based on India’s caste system.

Over in the continent of Narendra Modi, the lowest class are known as the untouchables. Thanks to crypto, there might be a new caste discovered in India that is finally being served: the unbankables.

Yes in order to open a bank account or get a loan as a small business in India, the amount of paperwork one has to through seems unsurmountable, which may explain for the sudden explosion of interest in DeFi (Decentralized Finance) over in the financial capital Mumbai.

Before DeFi entered India, there was already a lot of interest from crypto investors, with Siddharth Verma, co-founder of crypto lender Nuo Network in Mumbai explaining that:

DeFi does not discriminate between the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor as much as the traditional financial ecosystem does.

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10 billion locked

Even after the wild ride that DeFi and it’s infamous food coins saw in the second half of August, the sector continues to prosper. By now, there are more than $10 billion being traded in coins all across various Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols. Uniswap ($1.98B), MakerDAO ($1.95B), and Aave ($1.5b) protocols are battling it out for dominance as more and more DeFi coins continue to see the light of day.

Although the volumes in India are still mild given the threat of a total ban on crypto by the government, the first signs are very promising indeed. The world’s fifth-largest economy can surprise anyone by the sheer growth potential, and crypto is no exception.

For example, WazirX, a popular crypto exchange in Mumbai, started allowing DeFi coins since a month, and the interest in it has been so grand that by now 16 coins have already been added.

CEO Nischal Shetty explained:

Every week we are adding a defi token. Around $2 million to $3 million defi tokens are traded daily, accounting for 25% of total traded volumes.

Of course, with the stellar growth of DeFi also comes the warning of a repeat of the 2017 ICO bubble which crypto has experienced, and many classic investors therefore shy away from DeFi for the moment, although they are interested in Bitcoin.

Indians don’t seem to mind that much, and are trading DeFi like other financial products, this time also serving the unbankables.