Binance, Kraken and KuCoin Removed from Apple Store India

About two weeks ago, the Indian government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) warned nine global crypto exchanges for non-compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering Financing of Terrorism (CFT) laws. FIU requested the Ministry of Information Technology to block the websites of all 9 exchanges in India.

Apps of as many as eight crypto exchanges including Binance, Kraken, Mexc and Kucoin have disappeared from Apple’s App Store in India, less than two weeks after the firms were flagged for operating “illegally” in the country. Techcruch reporter. https://t.co/p3L2kTrlhb https://t.co/lYpru5luYN

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) January 10, 2024

The list of 9 exchanges “flagged” by the Indian government includes: Binance, Kraken, KuCoin, Huobi, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitfinex and Bitstamp.

To date (January 10, 2024), 8/9 exchange applications have disappeared from the Apple Store in India, only Bitstamp is still displayed. Meanwhile, the Google Play store is still available for the above-mentioned exchange applications.

In recent years, Indian cryptocurrency investors have turned to global exchanges like Binance to avoid harsh tax regimes. Since the government implemented the 30% tax in July 2022, there have been 429,000 downloads of Binance as of September.

While domestic exchanges such as WazirX, CoinDCX, CoinSwitch Kuber lost about 80 – 90% of transactions. However, the situation is gradually changing after a drastic move from the Indian government against global exchanges, helping local exchanges attract users again.