OKX Planning Web3 Foray Into India, Chief Marketing Officer Says

OKX, 1 of the 10 largest crypto exchanges by trading volume, is readying to participate India and enlistee section employees to research imaginable Web3 applications, the firm's main selling serviceman told CoinDesk connected Wednesday.

The company, which doesn't person a planetary headquarters, has determination hubs successful Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and the Bahamas. It plans to standard up its wallet services "exponentially" by tapping into India's much-talked-about developer community, Haider Rafique said successful an interview. Currently, OKX has astir 200,000 wallet users successful India, which is lone 5% of the nation's Web3 users, helium added.

"We are not going to travel successful and cowboy this thing," helium said. "We're going to larn astir the community. We're going to enactment with section folks. Figure retired wherever we tin adhd value."

Crypto isn't banned successful India, and isn't precisely ineligible either. The federation has not brought guardant immoderate authorities successful parliament for Web3 oregon cryptocurrency issues, but has imposed stiff taxes connected trading and implemented anti-money laundering rules. Some plans to see Web3 successful India's integer communicative are afoot. The cardinal slope continues to reason legalizing cryptocurrency portion promoting its cardinal slope integer currency (CBDC). And arsenic G20 president, the state has pushed for planetary rules for crypto.

The stifling regulatory situation has kept astir planetary cryptocurrency exchanges distant from India. Of the 10 most-downloaded trading apps successful the country, six are from planetary exchanges, according to information from AppTweak. And 1 of those is Coinbase (COIN), whose trading cognition was suspended wrong 3 days of its launch. India's politicians person been asking the Web3 manufacture to decouple itself from crypto.

"You person to benignant of abstracted Web3 from CeFi [centralized finance] and I deliberation regulators are starting to bash that too," Rafique said. "They're much acrophobic astir venues that person fiat on-ramps, which we bash but we don't connection it successful India. Once India comes up with a regulatory model for crypto past we would similar to beryllium the beforehand runners."

OKX does not person an bureau successful the federation and has nary contiguous program to unfastened 1 due to the fact that that's not required to connection Web3 services, said Rafique. But it is looking to prosecute a squad to pb this effort.

"We're trying to place who's who successful the zoo and what is their contribution. There's a ample developer community. How bash we assistance them, physique a narration with them," helium said. "How bash we archetypal fto them cognize what we're about. And past enactment with these communities to fig retired what is the close mode in. Is it for america to sponsor Web3 conferences oregon developer conferences oregon big an OKX Blockchain Week? This is what we are exploring."

Recently OKX partnered with blockchain level Neo for its APAC Hackathon successful the confederate metropolis of Bengaluru, which Haider said is simply a trial to validate their assumptions, recognize the civilization and enactment the ecosystem.