Crypto trading booms in India as job growth and incomes disappoint

NAGPUR, India – Like thousands of his countrymen in far-flung places, flower shop owner Ashish Nagose has been learning about trading cryptocurrencies by attending classes every weekday for the past two months in his home city of Nagpur in western India.

Mr Nagose has bought and sold stock options earlier but is now venturing into cryptocurrencies as regulators have made it harder to trade equity derivatives in India. The 28-year-old believes the red-hot crypto asset class can help shield his family-owned flower shop during downturns.

“I want to run my family shop and hope that trading can provide a steady income when business slows down, like in the month after (the Hindu festival of) Diwali,” he said, seated at the storefront surrounded by bunches of red roses and orange marigolds.

Newfound crypto enthusiasts in India, such as Mr Nagose, have helped grow cumulative trading volumes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies on four of its largest exchanges more than twofold quarter on quarter to US$1.9 billion (S$2.5 billion) in the October to December quarter, according to data from aggregator CoinGecko.

Many young Indians are dabbling in crypto trading to supplement their regular income in the world’s most populous country, where jobs and pay increases have lagged world-beating economic growth. Nearly two-thirds of its 1.4 billion people are below the age of 35, according to a government report.

From stocks and derivatives, they are now gravitating towards crypto assets, whose prices have soared after US President Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024 promised a looser regulatory regime for the asset.

“There is a lot of curiosity at the ground level... especially with Trump becoming the US president and the entire flavour of crypto changing world over,” said Mr Edul Patel, co-founder of Mudrex, an Indian crypto exchange.

Overall, India’s