According to India's Economic Times, some Indian banks, including the State Bank of state bank of india, suspended the transactions in the accounts of local bitcoin exchanges, including the top ten exchanges, and they thought these transactions were suspicious.

These banks also require bitcoin exchanges to provide additional guarantees for their loans. "Since last month, banks have been asking for extra one-on-one guarantees." In addition, they have taken measures to restrict the withdrawal of cash from several accounts that are still in operation.

Bitcoin transactions in India are basically unregulated. About a month ago, the Indian tax authorities conducted an on-site inspection of the Bitcoin exchange to investigate the identities and records of Bitcoin users and traders.

Taxpayers found that some exchanges do not provide financial data and never pay business tax and value-added tax. Other exchanges submitted very suspicious data. Tax officials also claimed that the information they provided was inconsistent.

According to a finance and taxation official who participated in the audit of bitcoin exchanges, there are two main problems in these virtual currency exchanges:

1. Add the income of buyers and sellers to the total income of the exchange.

2. In many cases, exchanges buy and sell virtual currency on their own platforms.

Although India didn't ask the Bitcoin exchange to close like China did, an official of the Indian Ministry of Finance recently called this virtual currency a Ponzi scheme.

At present, bitcoin exchanges in India are waiting for further clarification of government policies. Many people think that if the government really wanted to shut down, they would have taken action long ago. Some people think that the authorities may follow the example of other developed countries, such as Britain, instead of China.

Sathvik Vishwanath, co-founder and CEO of Unocoin, said: "I don't think what happened in other Asian countries will spread to India."

The Indian Bitcoin Exchange hopes to find out the definition of Bitcoin by the authorities. Once virtual currency such as bitcoin is recognized as currency, then the exchange does not need to pay taxes. If it is classified as a commodity, it needs to pay 18% tax. If these virtual currency transactions are defined as services, a tax of 12% is required.

If the commodity tax of 18% is paid, the total tax payable by the bitcoin exchange may reach165438+300 million USD.

According to tax officials' estimates, the annual total revenue of the top ten bitcoin exchanges, including zebpay, Unocoin, CoinSecure and btcxindia, may be as high as 400 billion rupees (about 6.3 billion US dollars).

According to insiders, the profit rate of many bitcoin exchanges is close to 20%, and the profits mainly come from the transaction premium, bid-ask spread and the profits of exchanges participating in transactions.