Cryptocurrency This Week: Supreme Court Sets Next Hearing In July, Coindelta Shuts Down And More

After a brief hearing yesterday (March 29), the two Judge bench of Supreme Court — Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and Justice Navin Sinha — has now ordered to list the crypto case in the second week of July.

Speaking to Inc42, the second petitioner-in-person advocate Vijay Pal Dalmia informed that the government (Union of India) failed to respond to the Supreme Court’s call of introducing a crypto policy framework in four weeks.

As a result, “the Court will now simply go by the merits of this case,” he said.

Moving on, for the past few weeks, Bitcoin and other leading cryptocurrencies Ethereum and Ripple are apparently enjoying the spring after a year-long crypto winter.

While Bitcoin continues to trade above $4K, the crypto market cap, too, is over $140 Bn.

Is Spring back for cryptocurrency startups as well? Last month, Inc42, had reported that Bengaluru-based Bank of Hodlers was planning to launch a slew of cryptocurrency-based banking solutions. This included insurance against crypto theft, crypto-backed loans and crypto credit cards

Now, Mumbai-based crypto startup CoinDCX, which raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures earlier this month, has now launched a crypto lending programme called DCXLend for Hodlers.

DCXLend is currently available for five cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Tether and Binance Coin. The interest rates offered on these cryptocurrencies are 2% on Bitcoin, 1% on Tether and Binance Coin and 0.75% on Ripple and Ethereum on monthly basis.

Speaking to Inc42, founder and CEO Sumit Gupta said that the borrowed funds are used to provide margin to its DCXmargin users on interest, enabling the company to pay high interest rates to its lenders.

Gupta explained while in the last one year, there has been a stability in terms of cryptocurrency prices, the exponential rise between July 2017 to Dec 2017  attracted lacs of cryptocurrency traders who, after January 2018 when prices started plunging, started complaining that they were not getting any returns over crypto investments.

“Every exchange was fighting with liquidity issues. This was where we thought to introduce an exchange which could serve the users better. And, as a result, we have now come up with a lending product called DCXlend,” he said.

Gupta also informed that the startup is enroute to set up a subsidiary/company in Estonia to cater to the European market.

Backed by notable angel investors including Sanjay Mehta  (Mehta Ventures), Sung Ho Choi (Founder, Fubo TV), Karn Nagpal (Blockchain Investor), Jatin Aneja, (Partner at India’s Leading Law Firm), Rafael Ugolini (Blockchain Investor) and Utsav Somani (Partner, AngelList India), CoinDCX has currently over 55K users on its platform.

However, Indian exchanges at large continue to face the wrath of RBI circular. Now, Pune-based Coindelta has announced that it will no longer be able to provide exchange services for cryptocurrencies.

In a notification on its website, the company stated, “It has been really difficult for us to operate Coindelta exchange for the last six months. The curb on the bank accounts by RBI has made us handicapped in order to provide seamless deposit and withdrawal services. There has not been any significant progress in the Supreme Court case which makes it difficult to predict when we will see the regulation.”

“Economically, it’s no longer viable to continue with the exchange. It brings us no joy in ceasing operations. It broke our hearts to do that but it is the need of the hour considering limited resources at your disposal”, it added

In other news, Mumbai Crime Branch and ED are purportedly set to question Indian film actor  Shahbaz Khan. Shahbaz Khan was earlier seen in various videos as a promoter of CashCoin, a high-yield investment program which duped investors of $14.52 Mn.

According to a web daily CCN, Mumbai police has arrested four scammers pertaining to the Cashcoin scam.