Indians Using Bitcoin Amidst The Local Currency Crisis

Indian economy has been through vigourous ups and downs in the past 5-10 years but for the first time in history, India is experiencing such momentous change in the financial charts. More recently, we saw a drastic incline in India’s gross bitcoin usage. As inconceivable as it sounds, India now stands at number 2 in the list of Bitcoin Amazon Buyers released by purse.io. Talking precisely, all these financial changes are happening partly because of the ongoing currency crisis in the country.

The Indian government has demonetized the larger denomination currency bills of rupees 500 and 1000 earlier this week. The Indian Prime Minister, Modi released a televised statement on November 8, informing the citizens that the bills won’t be legal for use and distribution following the mid-night. Shortly after that, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) called a press conference to introduce the new currency notes of Rupees 500 and 2000 that will be replacing the older ones. All these measures were taken to crack down the black money that is supposed to be stashed in the larger denomination currency bills. The Indian citizens are also given 50 days of time to exchange their 500/1000 Rupees bills for the new ones. But since the entire exchange process is going to take a lot of time, the Indian citizens are largely using virtual money instead of cash. This is one of the reasons why many Indian citizens are using bitcoin for amazon purchases via purse.io.

Also read Bitcoin ATMs Are Increasing In Massive Numbers.

The Amazon Discount Service by Purse.io

Since the Amazon doesn’t directly accept bitcoin payments, people are using purse.io’s amazon discount service. Purse.io provides a unique platform for the shoppers to buy items on Amazon using bitcoin, grabbing exciting discounts at the same time.

Puse.io connects bitcoin shoppers to the those Amazon gift card holders who have additional gift cards to offer. You just have to choose the item that you want to buy and pay for it using bitcoin. The gift card holders will buy the item for you by trading their extra gift cards in exchange of your bitcoins. Puse.io enables the shoppers to save up to 20% on their bitcoin purchases. It also ensures a safe exchange by means of the escrow service.      

A Huge Jump In Indian Purse.io Users

Purse.io services are avialable in India in partnership with Unocoin which happens to be a major bitcoin wallet service provider in India. So, all the unocoin wallet users in India can avail the amazon discount services of purse.io while paying in bitcoin.

There had been a steady rise in the Indian users of purse.io. But following the chain of event that took place this week, there has been a huge jump in the number of purse.io users in the country. Just hours after the demonetization of larger denomination banknotes in the country, it acquired the second spot in the list of top 10 worldwide purse.io users. On November 9, purse.io took to twitter to announce this change of positions in the global charts.    

What are the top countries currently using #bitcoin to discount shop on Amazon? We're happy to see India at #2, & Venezuela still climbing! pic.twitter.com/YIVeiMG9Fj

— Purse (@PurseIO) 8 November 2016

In the wake of the on-going currency-crisis in the country, the people are largely using virtual money for all the major purchases. This is because almost all the retailers and merchants have already said “no” to the older larger denomination notes and it’s still taking time to get those notes exchanged for the new ones. So people are left with the only option to use the virtual wallets wherever they can. And the sudden rise in the use of bitcoin wallets like Unocoin and Zebpay could also be an aftermath of the ongoing currency crisis in the country. Seeing the massive population of India, chances are it will still take several days or even weeks to stabilize the current situation. Till then, just like the virtual money, the use of bitcoin in the country is also tend to rise.