To shift the base to more crypto-friendly destinations, a huge number of Indian entrepreneurs and developers in the Web 3.0 space are leaving the country in a bid. WazirX founder Nischal Shetty and Siddharth Menon have moved to Dubai with their families, who were the co-founders of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Apart from that Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal also shifted to Dubai over the last two years. ZebPay and Vauld had already shifted to Singapore earlier; CoinDCX now has a Singapore arm.
On the other hand, the UAE and Singapore are successfully actively promoting the ecosystem, contributing policy certainty to investors and incentives to attract and foster talent pools. Crypto exchange founders are leaving India, several developers and engineers working in this space have already moved out or have decided to shift to Dubai and Singapore.The cryptocurrency was introduced in India first in 2018, when the Reserve Bank of India guided banks to cut money supply to crypto trading platforms — a move that was repealed by the Supreme Court in 2020. Last year, the government introduced a Bill in Parliament to forbid all private cryptocurrencies, but the Bill was not passed.
In Early 2022, through the Union Budget for 2022-23, a 30% tax on virtual digital assets was inserted with provisions different to other asset classes. Later, the government also introduced a 1% tax deducted at source (TDS) which will be effective by July 1. Recently, the government issued guidelines mentioning the responsibilities of various entities such as crypto f, buyers, sellers and brokers on deducting the 1% TDS. Dubai has emerged as a hotspot for crypto investments. In March this year, Dubai introduced the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), which would promote Dubai as a hub for virtual assets, which would help in attracting investments and providing systems to protect investors. In addition to that in Dubai, there’s no income tax and other than a 5% VAT, gains from selling virtual assets are virtually tax-free.
