India’s Crypto Crackdown: 49 Exchanges Bow to the FIU Crown 👑

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Ah, the labyrinthine world of cryptocurrency, where India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has, with a flourish of bureaucratic zeal, anointed 49 exchanges as compliant minions under its anti-money laundering regime for the fiscal masquerade of 2024-25. 🕵️♂️✨

A triumph, you say? Perhaps. But let us not forget that in this digital bazaar, regulation is but a shadow play, and the players, mere puppets in a grander charade.

49 Crypto Firms Kiss the FIU Ring, While Shadows Lurk 🦇

The FIU’s annual tome of wisdom reveals that 45 of these exchanges are homegrown, their roots tangled in the fertile soil of India. The remaining four, exotic blooms from foreign shores, have deigned to register as reporting entities. How quaint. 🌍💼

49 exchanges registered, yet the crypto jungle teems with hundreds more, untamed and unfettered.

India’s crypto market-a circus of competition, where only the wiliest survive.

Healthy competition? Ah, the naiveté of youth. Innovation, they say. I say, chaos. 🎪🤹♂️

– Sumit Gupta (CoinDCX) (@smtgpt) January 6, 2026

In this land of paradoxes, cryptocurrencies are christened Virtual Digital Assets (VDAs), and their purveyors, VDA Service Providers (VDA SPs). A nomenclature fit for a Kafkaesque novel, no? 📜🤔

In 2023, the regulators, with a stroke of their quill, ensnared these entities within the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), beneficial ownership sleuthing, and the monitoring of token tomfoolery-all part of the grand ballet. 🕵️♀️💃

Yet, the FIU’s report, a tapestry of caution, warns of the crypto ecosystem’s dark underbelly: hawala whispers, gambling dens, and fraud schemes as intricate as a Nabokovian plot. 🕸️🃏

“VDAs and VDA SPs, with their global tentacles, rapid settlements, and peer-to-peer dalliances, are a siren’s call to money launderers and terror financiers,” the report intones, dripping with gravitas. 🧜♀️⚠️

Penalties, you ask? A paltry ₹28 crore ($3.1 million) was extracted from recalcitrant exchanges in 2024-25. Notices were dispatched to 25 exchanges, their names etched in infamy: BingX, LBank, CoinW, CEX.IO, Poloniex. The FIU’s wrath, though tardy, is implacable. ⚖️💰

Amidst this crackdown, the global titans have returned, tails between their legs. Bybit, Binance, Coinbase-each paid their pound of flesh in fines and resumed their Indian sojourn. A fiscal pas de deux, if you will. 💃💸

And what of fraud? Ah, the eternal companion of innovation. Ponzi schemes, a decade in the making, have been unraveled, their architects exposed. Yet, the dance continues, ever more intricate, ever more absurd. 🕺🤥

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2026-01-06 17:07