India has accused nine major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Kucoin, Huobi, Kraken, Gate, Bittrex, Bitstamp, MEXC, and Bitfinex, of illegal activities within its territory. As a result, local authorities have decided to block access to these trading platforms' websites in the region. The Indian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) accuses these offshore exchanges of not complying with local anti-money laundering and terrorism financing laws, as well as operating without registration.

Since March 2023, the crypto business in India has been required to register with the FIU, including aligning their operations with local anti-money laundering legislation, which includes mandatory KYC verification procedures. The mentioned crypto exchanges failed to meet this requirement.

This decision followed the tightening of measures aimed at combating money laundering in the crypto sector. In 2022, Indian authorities introduced a transaction tax, which severely impacted local cryptocurrency exchanges and led to a decrease in their trading volume. Due to these restrictions, Indian traders moved to offshore platforms, some of which are now being targeted for blocking by local authorities.

Indian crypto exchanges also faced banking restrictions but learned to circumvent these barriers using P2P methods. Despite the repression and tightening of regulations, the proportion of Indians who have ever conducted transactions with cryptocurrencies continues to grow.