May 11
Informal Pressure from RBI in India Says coin base crypto firm
Top cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase quit India operations owing to “informal pressure” from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), its CEO Brian Armstrong has revealed for the first time.
The US-based and Nasdaq-listed exchange had halted payments via unified payments interface (UPI) mode on its app in India last month.
In the company’s earnings call late on Tuesday, Armstrong said that the company disabled the UPI “because of some informal pressure from the Reserve Bank of India”.
“There are elements in the government there, including at the Reserve Bank of India, who don’t seem to be as positive on it. And so they — in the press, it’s been called a ‘shadow ban’, basically, they’re applying soft pressure behind the scenes to try to disable some of these payments, which might be going through UPI,” Armstrong told analysts.
