What Binance Returning to India Means for Crypto Growth in 2025

Penetrating a lucrative market of roughly 1.4 billion consumers means respecting the target culture – and it means playing by the rules even if those rules seem prohibitively stringent to external entities trying to break into the market.

In the case of popular cryptocurrency trading platform Binance, operating in India hasn’t been a simple matter. India’s regulators have strict rules and demands on offshore exchanges such as Binance.

For a short while, the nation’s crackdown on foreign crypto exchanges prevented Binance and similar businesses from operating in India. Yet, with persistence and respect for India’s authorities, Binance has recently returned to India’s cryptocurrency trading space – and this will undoubtedly have implications for the global crypto market’s future growth.

At the Binance India Crypto Meetup in November, Binance Head of Regional Markets Vishal Sacheendran commented on the growing Indian crypto community, “India has always been a very important market for Binance, and the community here is a testament to what we've tried to achieve over the past few years.”

Big Taxes for a Big Market

India’s Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) issued a tax requirement on Binance in August, equivalent to $86 million. Prior to that, in January, Indian authorities prohibited Binance and several other offshore cryptocurrency exchanges from operating, owing to alleged noncompliance with local regulations.

Binance made an attempt after the ban to work with India’s regulators, offering to pay a $2 million fine and then re-establish its services in India. Since that time, however, the required fine escalated to $86 million.

Western investors may be surprised to learn about India’s tough tax rules in the Indian cryptocurrency domain. The nation’s rules require that all cryptocurrency service providers and investors pay a 1% tax deducted at source (TDS) on every cryptocurrency transaction. On top of that, cryptocurrency investment profits are subject to a whopping 30% tax.

Along with the heavy tax burden, crypto exchanges and traders operating in India must deal with a regulatory framework that’s not as clear-cut as those in Europe, for example, or in the UAE. To this day, compliance-seeking cryptocurrency platforms continue to await a more detailed regulatory framework in India. Per Binance’s blog post, India’s Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary “stated that there are no immediate plans to introduce legislation for regulating the sale and purchase of virtual assets.”

From Setback to Bounce-Back

Despite the setback of the $86 million equivalent fine, and despite being kept out of India’s cryptocurrency trading space for months on end, Binance disclosed in April the company’s “intention to resume operations in India, contingent on settling its outstanding tax liabilities.”

Why would Binance be willing to pay such a hefty fine and navigate a challenging regulatory landscape? Certainly, tapping into such a vast and eager cryptocurrency market will be worth the price of admission in the long term.

A report from LUNU News states that Binance “previously commanded an impressive 90% share of India’s estimated $4 billion cryptocurrency holdings.” Thus, re-entry into India’s crypto market will assuredly provide a powerful ongoing revenue source for Binance.

Binance’s willingness to pay the huge fine and comply with India’s rules will undoubtedly have big-picture implications on a global scale. Sure, this will further establish Binance as a cooperative and responsible firm, but there’s more to the story.

If Binance can bounce back from such a harsh financial setback in India, this could set an enduring precedent for Binance’s peers as well as for digital-asset firms of all stripes. It would send a message around the world that skeptical regulatory entities will present hurdles and setbacks will happen, but innovators will prevail sooner or later even if they have to modify their approaches.

The Grand Return and Its Global Implications

And so, Binance did indeed prevail in grand fashion in the company’s quest to return to India. As reported by GlobalData, Binance successfully “registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) as a reporting entity.” Consequently, after a seven-month ban, Binance’s services were now available again via India’s Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Naturally, the significance of this achievement wasn’t lost on Binance CEO Richard Teng. “Our registration with the FIU-IND marks an important milestone in Binance’s journey,” Teng assured. The CEO added that Binance’s return to India “allows us to tailor our services to the needs of Indian users.”

This point reinforces the concept of a win-win scenario: Binance’s return to growth in India means that in 2025, more consumers can be introduced and onboarded into the exciting cryptocurrency space. In the end, Binance’s milestone moment represents a leap forward in the never-ending story of the blockchain’s adoption, proper regulation, and inevitable globalization.