Although the Indian government is on a quest to clamp down on the cryptocurrency sector, local news source Business Standard reported that the Indian branch of job website 'Indeed' saw an increase in job postings related to cryptocurrency to the tune of 290 percent. In addition, the site also saw a 52 percent increase in job seekers who entered Blockchain -related keywords into Indeed’s search engine.
Managing Director of Indeed, India Sashi Kumar, said that the blockchain industry is really just beginning to grow, and could go a lot further (provided that the Indian government allows it to do so): "The market, globally for blockchain related products and services is expected to reach $7.7 billion in 2022, which is indicative of even more jobs being created in the sector in the future."
Kumar conceded that although there is a lot of buzz around crypto, not enough time has passed for the industry to truly establish itself. "While blockchain development promises to be an exciting new field of work and offers tremendous scope for application, the sector is still in a very nascent stage."
The Indian Government Aiming to Stamp Out Crypto’s Role in ‘Financing Illegitimate Activities”
Late last week, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley explicitly stated in the country’s annual budget speech that the Indian government does not recognize cryptocurrency as legal tender. Additionally, Jaitly declared that the government “will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto assets in financing illegitimate activities as part of the Payments system.”
Just yesterday, the acting secretary of the department of economic affairs stated that the Indian government will have a more concrete set of crypto regulations in place by the end of March. It’s not yet clear exactly what the regulations will entail, but statements by Indian government officials have nodded toward the need for measures to enforce KYC and AML on exchanges and other crypto firms.
Despite the impending regulations, however, the crypto scene in India appears to be doing relatively well--in addition to the telling statistics on Indeed, it was estimated in mid-January that India was responsible for ten percent of worldwide BTC transactions.
