Topic: Bitcoin in India? Not for a LOOOOONG time. (Read 14697 times)

They can still use bitcoin indirectly via alt coins.  The technology is still available just not that unique brand, I too also hope bitcoin refines their protocol to avoid elitism but even if they dont its not a reason why India is not going to use bitcoin.

The biggest factor is probably infrastructure, I dont know if Indian population has good telecommunications or not.  I presume they still require actual physical development in many parts for the general population to even be able to take an interest.
Then beyond that as a beginning bitcoin is just a hobby or past time, I dont anticipate them just immediately picking it up as part of business.   Its a venture that must propagate almost idly as education or simple experimentation.  We have already decided it has a use but that has to be recognised almost personally by India as a culture and likely its not close.

But as an end game I see BTC as more relevant to India then China.   India is far more a growing country, the reason I say that is demographics and the majority of the population is young.  This means a great pickup in use is possible where as China has a declining working population and a restricted amount of youth in comparison.  Obviously both are developing economies but India in theory at least has far more potential and would benefit more from btc

How so? India is a poor country and if they get to be known as a country that's using bitcoin, they can give a bad name to large investors because they would probably think that the coin is for poor people. But all these can result as a good thing as well. If bitcoin finally resolve scaling issues and the Indian people are able to do microtransactions, then that means smaller business can adopt to bitcoins as well.

Unfortunately, none of these are going to happen in the foreseeable future. SegWit will never be activated. UASF? I don't think that will be a success at all. When you take a look at the global scale of the game, no one cares about microtransactions, only people that are outpriced for bitcoin which are just a bunch of small players.

Wow that's weird. Indians are known to be techy, the IT support at my work office (large company >10000 people) are in fact indians. I have also seen ton of youtube tech videos made by indians, not many americans if you take an extra look, but it's the Americans who grow big.

That is the fact,you cannot expect everyone to use bitcoin but there will be a special class of users,who are technology savvy who will be using bitcoin and use its platform as a mode of transactions and to save their assets and with a country like India which is known as a technology hub,it is a matter of time that we see more people using bitcoin.

The same with my area too, 99% of the people don't no anything about bitcoin. The few people that have hear about bitcoin are those that are familiar with internet which only form about seventy percent of our country populace. People that know about it compared it mmm or pozin scheme. India is a great nation and they adoption of bitcoin will be a boost to blackchain industry.

Partially agreed with op, but there is another thing which we have to accept is, bitcoin is known and is being used by a select few who are mostly tech savvy. If you bounce on any common man in the most developed world who has nothing to do directly with technology, you will be in the same mathematics.

Some people misinterpret about India just because of India is the neighbor country of China. But adoption level of bitcoins between these two countries are in two different extremes.

It seems to be a strange thing that china being dominant in bitcoin mining and its neighbour India have very less people who knows bitcoin.But things have started changing slowly.There is a discussion going on in government on how to regulate bitcoin.There has been a gradual increase in number of people using bitcoins in india.We could instantly change our bitcoins into cash using localbitcoins.com.

All of the business based on crypto are always in the gray area. I don't think if they were included on the legal business. As long as there will be no a rule to prohibited the crypto business and I can say still safe to run a business based on the crypto currency.

Zebpay is not 100% legal. It has got some of the licenses, but some are lacking. So don't keep too many of your coins in the exchange, as it can be closed down at any moment. Until the government of India and the RBI recognizes BTC as a legal currency, you can't be sure about anything.

The government may not be supportive, but the people are taking to Bitcoin. In countries with high inflation like India, Bitcoin is a natural attraction. One of the exchanges in India - Zebpay, is adding ~2500 users every day.

http://profit.ndtv.com/news/market/article-bitcoin-users-growing-in-india-despite-rbi-concerns-1694857

Most of the people doesn't even know how to use online banking . Bitcoin is way too far for "whole population " of India . Yes Indian market will impact a lot on BTC but I think it should be promoted in India . Trading must be educated first because not all know about it .

I thought bitcoin is well known in India? Because I read some articles that people are investing in bitcoin in India as safe haven because demonization is still not lifted by the government? And if we could just get even just 1% of the total population of India, bitcoin price will definitely will rise because the demand coming for the Indian market is huge. I guess we are not seeing the clearer picture in terms of bitcoin usage in that country.

Well yes the growth in India has taken place and now more people are interested in India to know about btc and how it can be used. But now its upto govt and its authorities if they will legalize btc or make it a ban in India and this will make the future about btc in India. May be world is also now waiting and watching how does India react and make or break it.

Yes, very true.  It's too expensive now to use BTC in India.

When we were there in Nov 2015, I saw and heard NO evidence nor commentary on Bitcoin (OK, we were tourists in northern India, not in the high-tech cities in the south).

India has BIG TIME problems just with their currency.  If/when the Bitcoin Community resolves the scaling problem, India *might* have a bright future w/ BTC (later on), but we saw & heard NO evidence of that in late 2017.  NONE.

I would imagine they dont want to use btc now that fees are so high. Average wage in India in USD is 1,000 A YEAR. That means 83 usd a month or 19 dollars a week. They are not going to pay 1 dollar per transaction. They would lose all their money thay week for making 8 transactions.

I agree that the Information Technology sector is quite big in India, employing millions of people. But only a small part of these people are onto programming or developing. The rest are all employed in low level jobs such as data entry and digitization.

I don't think India takes the market next to China. Compared to China India has got only very small user base as well very small service sectors for bitcoin. During the demonetization India gained a enormous growth of bitcoin users. So I believe from that a gradual growth in the adoption and acceptance around the country might have begun.

Bitcoin will reach India but slowly. It is developing country and government is making lots of changes to its economic system. I think India has 2nd most populated rank in the world but they have less infrastructure for new feature so people are little bit away from bitcoin I guess. But once they start understanding the bitcoin it might happen that India becomes top most country to use bitcoins in the world. Lol. As they have too much population after China. With good  relations with China it may happen they make deal to exchange of these currencies on large scale. Well one can just imagine but the effect would be good.

Bitcoin use in India should exceed China I think because a greater proportion of their population is below 30 and below 25.  I think its actually the majority of a billion people are in their youth not the elderly like the west often has a bias to.
That should mean great growth potential and takeup by the young more willing to adapt as a product becomes useful to them.
     I say India more then China at least in theory because China has had control of its population for years which means this country actually now has a falling working population.  I guess China has more wealth but I think believe it is India which might need it more.   India tends to place faith in gold more I think but you cannot easily transact that across distance so India in general is a slower economy.        Hence OP is likely right, they will take their time unless fate deals a hand

Yeah that is true about India. Actually they have all the freedom they want but they lack richness about digital world. I mean India is Agriculture based country and more than half of the country is into business of farming so they don't really care about digital world. Yes government has reached out everywhere with Digital India schemes but people who live in villages enjoy crispy part and they don't really care about going all inside the virtual world or stuff like that. Moreover, the parts of cities which are into deep digitalisation are understanding the world for secure and safe surfing. They fear of going with virtual world because they are new to it (and it is obvious). I think there are sone companies who has taken the initiative to make bitcoin awareness in India (such as trading platforms and Indian Bitcoin Wallets). They will get used to it.