Crypto Crimes: Inside India’s Best-Kept Secret

by Mitali Mukherjee

English 376 pages 1 edition

The size of crypto investments in India stands at more than $10 billion, and about 15 million Indians have invested in cryptocurrencies. Most crypto traders are in the age group of twenty-two to thirty years, and hail from Tier 2, Tier 3 and Tier 4 towns. The volatility and easy money that crypto promises has turned it into a financial phenomenon. As the traders know, mining crypto coins is an arms race that rewards early adopters. And they are in a hurry. So where and when did the chase for fast money begin to take so many wrong turns? This book traces the murky underbelly of the crypto world and its mercurial spread across India-from the interiors of Uttar Pradesh, where crypto accounts are looted at gunpoint to quick black to white, switches for money in Bihar to the lure of drugs and parties in Karnataka and social media influencers who choose to be paid in crypto to circumvent both taxes and accountability. Crimes range in both scale and concentration. In a chilling report, a Special Investigation Team reported that cryptocurrency is allegedly being used for transactions in narcotics, drugs, smuggling, investment of unaccounted money and illegal betting. Its latest use is to procure arms and weapons, becoming an easy conduit to fund terror activities against the Indian state. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. With personal stories and first-person accounts, Crypto Crimes goes deep into the dark web to reveal the truth behind the crypto bubble that is red-hot, unregulated and spells trouble.