Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, does not currently view India as a viable country to pursue his crypto exchange operations. He detailed at a Techcrunch Crypto conference Thursday: “To be honest, I don’t think India is a very crypto-friendly environment.”
The CEO is specifically discouraged by the crypto tax regime that the government of India implemented earlier this year. In addition to taxing crypto income at 30%, crypto transactions are subject to a 1% tax deduction at the source (TDS).
In regard to India’s aggressive tax environment, the Binance CEO said: “If you are going to tax 1% on each transaction, there is not going to be that many transactions.”
He stressed, “A user could trade 50 times a day and they will lose like 70% of their money. There is not going to be any volume for an order book type of exchange. So we don’t see a viable business in India today.
We just have to wait. We are in conversation with a number of industry associations and influential people and trying to put some logic there,” CZ continued.
“We are trying to get this message across, but tax policies typically take a long time to change,” Zhao added with concern:
“Binance goes to countries where regulations are pro-crypto and pro-business. We don’t go to countries where we won’t have a sustainable business — or any business, regardless of whether or not we go.”
