- This week, news came out that Indian authorities had searched the offices of CoinSwitch Kuber, a venture-backed cryptocurrency exchange.
- Ashish Singhal, who helped start CoinSwitch and is now its CEO, said in a statement on Saturday that the company was working with the Enforcement Directorate and that the searches had nothing to do with money laundering.
Ashish Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of CoinSwitch Kuber, said on Twitter on Saturday that his company is working with India’s Enforcement Directorate and that the searches that were said to have happened last week had nothing to do with money laundering.
A source who knew about the process told Reuters on Saturday that financial records were taken during the office visits, and officials asked questions about “foreign investments, income, and outflows” to make sure they were following the rules.
Singhal wrote in the Twitter thread that CoinSwitch is “committed to building a responsible crypto ecosystem that contributes to the Indian economy and makes millions of Indians rich and gives them jobs.”
Last October, CoinSwitch raised $260 million in a Series C funding round. Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and other major VC firms back the company.
“The Enforcement Directorate in Bengaluru has talked to us about how our cryptocurrency platforms and exchanges work,” Singhal wrote. “We are working with them in every way.”
Bloomberg and CoinDesk both said last week that the searches had to do with the country’s laws on foreign exchange. The Indian government has been looking into the country’s cryptocurrency exchange ecosystem for months.
Singhal didn’t talk about why the Enforcement Directorate did what it did, but he did say that crypto regulation in India is still not clear.
“Crypto is a new type of investment. Most places in the world don’t know how to classify cryptos yet because they are still in their early stages. Now, the law (in India and other places) is still trying to figure out if crypto is a “good,” “security,” “currency,” or something else “Singhal typed. “This is still being worked on.”
