Why you need to read this Q&A with WazirX before investing in Cryptocurrency

Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with various industry stakeholders on Saturday (November 13, 2021) regarding the future course for Cryptocurrency in the country, there is a strong buzz of a Cryptocurrency Law being introduced in the forthcoming winter session of Parliament. Under the scanner are putting a stop to misleading ads, preventing the use of crypto to launder money or use in terror funding, as well as developing crypto technology.

WazirX, a leading Bitcoin and Cryptocurrenty Exchange, recently published their Transparency Report for the duration of April 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021 to give users a greater understanding of its processes, standard terms of use, and privacy policy. 

WazirX has carefully crafted policies to protect users’ data and financial information. The company’s Transparency Report addresses an array of requests received from law enforcement agencies (LEAs), the nature of information requests, user verification processes and the provisions for customer support.

Adgully is gearing up for the 5th edition of its marquee IP – MOBEXX. In its 5th year now, MOBEXX Summit & Awards 2021 will be held on November 30, 2021. MOBEXX is an endeavour to decode the mobile marketing environment and predict upcoming trends. As a run-up to MOBEXX 2021, Adgully will be bringing a series of interactions and feature reports to cover various aspects and trends seen in the fast growing Mobile marketing ecosystem in India.

In conversation with Nischal Shetty, CEO and Founder, WazirX, Adgully puts the spotlight on the nascent Crypto market in India, where Shetty speaks at length about WazirX’s Transperancy Report, regulation of crypto and instilling trust among investors and stakeholders, the road ahead and much more.

What is the objective behind launching the transparency report? What are the key highlights from the report?

We understand that trust must be gained through action, therefore as pioneers in the crypto space we wanted to launch a report that highlights the measures we take to secure our crypto community of investors and restore confidence in our various stakeholders before getting regulated. It sheds light upon the pain points we face as crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and investors that prevents barriers for the Indian ecosystem to foster innovation in our country.

Few highlights from the report:

The report highlights how we are helping various law enforcement agencies with their requests, how we protect our investors, our KYC verification process and how we cater to our customers’ requests to resolve their transactional issues.

Through the Transparency Report, we aim to bring clarity among investors and users, keeping the community as well as the legislative sensitised about how we operate at WazirX and what support we need from our industry stakeholders.

Launched last month, our Transparency Report also announced the launch of our policy website, Blockchain Papers, which helps in dispelling the myths that prevent investors and stakeholders from entertaining crypto-related conversations.

How will the Transparency Report help in giving crypto regulations a new way?

Milestones such as the Transparency Report have already created a positive movement within the community and we believe that this is going to reshape the regulations and perception towards crypto in India.

Actions like these motivate the industry to be transparent with regards to the handling of frequently asked questions and demystifying myths that exist in the crypto ecosystem.

We will be launching this report every six months with updated information, basing the progress we made on the policy front. The Transparency Report clarifies how one can navigate through this space, while empathising on the challenges that the community faces while trying to regulate this space. The initiative is a mark for the whole crypto industry as it shows that the industry is willing to take the regulations very seriously. With this, we also recently went live with a front page ad with The Economic Times to highlight how a select few Indian crypto exchanges commit to comply with self regulatory code of conduct laid down under the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

Our quote on the Ad:

“This is a prodigious milestone for the industry as a whole. It showcases the importance of how exchanges are coming together to work towards regulation of crypto and instilling trust among investors and stakeholders. Safety of our investors, fighting misinformation, educating our investors about the potential and the risks associated with crypto trading is at the utmost priority for us. It is at the very core of what we do and we believe as part of our mission for #IndiaWantsCrypto, initiatives like this would set the right foundation to build trust.

As the industry is gaining momentum with a staggering number of crypto adoption, we hope that more support from the government stakeholders and their guidelines for regulation would help foster more innovation. Creating more awareness on crypto, its classification and difference between CBDC and crypto is the need of the hour to set the stage for the much required regulation vital for enhancing investor protection and prevention of fraudulent behaviour.”

What is the overall goal of WazirX with this initiative?

With the initiative such as the transparency report, WazirX tried to set the higher standards of investor protection, focused on awareness and busting myths to fight misinformation that keeps people from investing/ understanding cryptos and its potential across sectors. We aim to look at the bigger goals like positive regulations and consider ourselves paving the way to do it through such forward looking initiatives.

What is the future of Crypto?

To address these questions and map the potential of the Indian Crypto Industry, we recently launched a secondary research report with NASSCOM. The report highlights the insights gathered from various stakeholders and industry participants, to identify how the CryptoTech market in India is shaping up. The report further analyses the emerging trends in the CryptoTech industry, and its potential in the Indian context. The report looks into the economic value addition, employment generation, and other benefits as presented in this insights compendium.

Key highlights from the report:

• CryptoTech industry to reach $ 241 million by 2030 in India, and $2.3 billion by 2026 globally
• $6.6 billion investments in crypto assets by retail Investors in India
• CryptoTech provides employment to 50,000 individuals in India
• CryptoTech landscape is fast evolving with 230+ start-ups and 150+ proof of concepts and projects
• Bitcoin has become the fastest asset to reach a market cap of $1 trillion surpassing gold and US Dollar
• Decentralised finance market size has jumped 100x over the last one year
• Industry can potentially create an economic value addition of $184 billion in the form of Investments and cost savings, and more than 800,000 employment opportunities

Additionally, Crypto has the potential to remove the financial barriers for rural India and provide cheaper access to capital, more online jobs. We are happy to see that the Government is pushing for crypto legislation. Emerging technologies like Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, AI and ML hold the key to future economic development. The Finance Minister had also said that India will take a calibrated approach towards regulating crypto. The crypto community looks forward to innovating and growing this ecosystem.

How safe is it to invest in crypto? How do you deal with frauds?

As highlighted in our Transparency Report, with appropriate precautions, awareness and guidelines, it is safe to invest in crypto. We at WazirX, ensure protection by taking various measures. Such as:

• The access that is allocated only to verified users who are identifiable with KYC documents. Processes are in place to allow the transfer of money from the user’s own whitelisted linked bank account.
• Deployed a robust transaction mechanism in place to identify any irregular and abnormal transactions.
• Routinely weed out bad actors based on transaction data intelligence. In addition, product upgrades are regularly floated throughout the year.
• Checks for frauds in KYCs and fraud cases are flagged and the users are blocked from submitting a new KYC from the same account.

Furthermore, WazirX continuously monitors transactions and also reports any suspicious activities based on the requests that come in from LEA agencies  Additionally, we also monitor these suspicious transactions leveraging our partnership with the TRM Labs. If any risk is detected, an alert is triggered and logged in the alerts portal, where it is reviewed and assigned to an investigator if necessary.

Investigations into Suspicious Activities: If screening and monitoring systems trigger a manual review, compliance investigators use the Forensics tool to investigate the alert in more detail, finding the source and destination of funds in a transaction, the address’ transaction history and any off-chain affiliations of note.

Lastly, we have a 24X7 robust support system at WazirX, who are looking into all the user related queires.

Does WazirX believe in investing in endorsement like some other brands in the industry?

We at WazirX, have always been keen on investing in education for the consumers using crypto. We have been consistent for a long time and stayed away from fancy celeb endorsements. However, we can’t comment about the future and want to ensure we do responsible marketing always.

The Advertising Standards Council of India already has guidelines in place for all investment adverts and we already comply with those guidelines and welcome every feedback.

We aim towards solving problems ever since the inception of WazirX. WazirX is the first exchange to introduce social media support, and it also has a dedicated social media handle. We are undoubtedly gaining popularity on all of our social media platforms.

Furthermore, our Nasscom analysis also endeavoured to aggregate emerging trends and insights shaping the CyptoTech, which has significant potential in the Indian context, looking into the economic value addition, employment generation, etc. We hope that our users gain an edge and sprout up through all these sessions and our continuous support and we also closely monitor and assist 24x7 to all the users with all possible ways and options. We collaborated with influencers actively during our last quarter – across all categories and genres, including Vir Das, Anupam Kher , Badshah , Harrdy Sindhu and Priya Malik, to name a few. Now, we are focused on working with our long-term partners such as Nikhil Chinapa, CA Rachna Ranade, Ankur Warikoo.