The cryptocurrency community has donated over $2.2 million to help India battle a resurgence in COVID-19 cases that has gripped the South Asian country over the past month. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal established the COVID-19 relief fund to get more food, vaccines and medicine to those in need. On Saturday, Nailwal called on his Twitter followers to chip in by donating tokens to a multi-sig ERC-20 address. “Can’t take this sitting down anymore, I am going to run a Covid relief campaign in lieu of what’s going on in India,” Nailwal said. “Need help from the Global crypto community.” Can't …

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has contributed 100 Ether (ETH) and 100 MKR tokens to a COVID-19 relief fund for India as the country finds itself embroiled in the virus’s second wave. Buterin contributed to a "crypto-COVID" relief fund set up on the cryptocurrency custodian platform, Gnosis Safe. Public transactions on the Ethereum blockchain show two transactions coming from one of Buterin’s wallets on Saturday. The Ethereum creator sent 100 ETH and 100 MKR to the relief fund, representing dollar values of $220,000 and $400,000, respectively. The donation drive was set up by Polygon (formally Matic) co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. On Saturday, …

For most of the last decade, India’s stance on cryptocurrencies has been uncertain, to say the least. The current soft ban is hurting the country’s potential every day, but recent reports suggest the country is having second thoughts. In March this year, a notification published by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs stated that companies dealing in cryptocurrencies would have to disclose their holdings to the government in financial statements. Crypto-holding companies will also have to disclose total profits and losses, as well as any deposits or advances received from other traders and investors. Just two weeks earlier, there was a …

The virtual 7th Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum was jointly hosted by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan and the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network with the theme “Enabling Resilience for All: The Critical Decade to Scale-up Action.” The forum took place in March and was held to formulate national adaptation planning for science and technology, and energy and fiscal policies that consider the interlinkages between climate change, health and biodiversity. These nature- and ecosystem-based policies will serve as the basis for the Asia-Pacific region’s contributions to the Leaders Summit on Climate in the United States; the United Nations Biodiversity …

Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange that went public on Nasdaq earlier this month, continues to actively expand in India with a new hire. The cryptocurrency exchange has hired Pankaj Gupta, a former Google Pay engineering lead in India and Asia Pacific, as the vice president of engineering and site lead for India. Announcing the news on Tuesday, Gupta said that he will be responsible for “leading and building from scratch the company’s technology hub in India.” He also noted that Coinbase has started hiring in India, posting several job applications. Coinbase officially announced plans to establish a business presence in …

India has been the subject of intense speculation regarding the future legal status of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies in recent months. Speculation went into overdrive in February when an anonymous Indian minister told Bloomberg that a nationwide blanket ban on cryptocurrency was imminent and that holders would be given a matter of months to dispense with their coins and tokens. Fears were then allayed — somewhat — when finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told CNBC that reports of a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies had been overstated, adding that any pending regulation would take a much more “calibrated” approach. Perhaps it …

Indian multinational technology firm Tech Mahindra is developing a new stablecoin service targeting banks and financial institutions. The tech giant announced Monday that it has entered into an agreement with Dutch blockchain application incubator Quantoz to launch a “stablecoin-as-a-service” tool to reduce transaction costs and processing times. The new collaboration targets potential clients from the banking and financial sector as the United States’ Office of the Comptroller of the Currency officially allowed federally chartered U.S. banks to use public blockchains and stablecoins for settlements in January 2021. Rajesh Dhuddu, blockchain and cybersecurity leader at Tech Mahindra, said: “The recent OCC …

India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, WazirX, has launched a nonfungible token marketplace for the exchange of digital art, assets, intellectual property and more, reports India’s Economic Times. The launch comes hot on the heels of a month when WazirX’s in-house exchange token, WRX, gained almost 2,000% in value, as its price jumped from $0.27 to $5.66. The exchange itself was subject to the same trajectory during the past six months, as visitors to its website increased by 631%, according to information publicly available browser tools. WazirX founder Nischal Shetty celebrated the launch, which he claimed was the first of its kind …

Major Indian crypto exchange WazirX experienced disruptions caused by system failures for more than four hours Sunday. In a tweet at 5:24 PM UTC, WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty reported that the crypto exchange had “hit some internal limits” set by one of the infrastructure providers. The load on Wazir’s system reportedly created “a ripple effect on all the services,” causing some of the exchange’s 1.8 million users to report being unable to see any funds in their accounts during the outage. “It’s because parts of the system are not working,” said Shetty. “One such system is the one that shows …

Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce company by sales, has said it will be accepting Bitcoin payments in what many suspect is an April Fools’ Day prank. In an announcement on Twitter today at 11:30 pm India Standard Time, Flipkart said it would be accepting Bitcoin (BTC) “as a convenient mode of payment” for its online marketplace. However, many users have refused to accept the e-commerce company’s seemingly pro-crypto stance given the timing — at the time of publication, it is already April Fools’ Day in India. The future is here. We now accept Bitcoin as a convenient mode of payment. Update …

Nischal Shetty, CEO of Indian crypto exchange WazirX, and other stakeholders in the industry are reportedly working toward convincing the government to adopt more nuanced cryptocurrency regulations. According to a report by The Economic Times, the country’s Blockchain and Crypto Council has drafted a presentation note highlighting recommendations for cryptocurrency regulations in India. The regulatory framework proposed by the council — which is an arm of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, or IAMAI — reportedly contains measures to address issues like money laundering and threats to rupee monetary sovereignty in the country. For Shetty, the proactive approach adopted …

While the legal status of cryptocurrencies remains undecided in India, companies in the country involved in virtual assets must now report their activities as part of their financial statements. The new rule follows amendments made by the country’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs to Schedule III of the 2013 Companies Act. According to the document published on Wednesday, Indian firms both public and private that have invested or traded in crypto during the financial year must disclose their profits or losses. Other crypto-related disclosures include the amount of cryptocurrency held by the company as of the reporting date as well as …