As of today, 1 BTC has a market value of ~93500 USD with YTD gains of over 100%. At the same time, INR is trading at near all time lows against the USD (let’s ignore the fading purchasing power of USD for now). Given the insatiable appetite of domestic investors, who more or less made up for the huge selling by FIIs in the past few weeks, it’s puzzling why the government isn’t proposing clear and friendly regulations to allow investors easy exposure to BTC, if not all crypto assets.

The current regulatory landscape is a nightmare for the average investor. While crypto investments are not banned, access to the most active global exchanges is censored at the DNS level. The ridiculous TDS of 1% on every transaction, in addition to a flat 30% taxation on capital gains, without the ability to offset losses, indicates just how unfriendly rules are for any investor who legally wants exposure to crypto assets. I’m not expecting these regulations to be eased any time soon.

However, I’m surprised the jugaad opportunist hasn’t worked around these limitations. It should be relatively easy for an Indian company to setup a subsidiary in a crypto friendly jurisdiction, hold crypto assets there and offer shares as a proxy to the value held. If this is legal and feasible, the first Indian company to achieve this with exposure to the public markets might experience the same hyperbolic price growth demonstrated by $MSTR recently (with the same risks, obviously).