Particularly at this crucial point in the country’s process of demonetization which has caused the citizens to seek alternative methods of handling their money issues, there have been suggestions that India could learn from China in matters related to both blockchain and bitcoin as they get more topical.

CEO of Cashaa, a P2P platform that enables Indians to transfer money without any intermediaries, Kumar Gaurav,  told 8btc in a chat that India could cultivate certain virtues that have worked for China.

Indians line up to exchange new cash.

“Patience, proper research, smart decisions and not fighting the corruption with something which does exactly the opposite,”

Gaurav stated.

“I consider India’s move on banning 500Rs and 1000Rs banknotes to be an economic experiment which is not good for neither regular citizens nor businesses in the country. I don’t think China would have done the same. So there are a lot of things for India to learn.”

“Hong Kong is just another example of a smart decision to be a “connected tax haven”. It gives the Chinese the opportunity to grow and try capitalism while still maintaining a strong control on the mainland. I think India should experiment in a similar small ecosystem and not on the whole economy like they did few weeks ago.”

Since the demonetization process started, talks about Bitcoin have heightened in the world’s second most populated country after China. Several new users have been brought into the Bitcoin fold in India with some seeking to know more about it, adds Mohit Kalra, the CEO of Coinsecure, a Bitcoin exchange in India.

Though Kalra couldn’t say much about the exact percentage of Indians that have now become aware of Bitcoin, he said he knows that their curiosity has increased going by the massive increase in numbers seen on exchanges.  

“These people may already know about Bitcoin before and were trading in the black market with cash and now, with no option left, are moving to online exchanges like ours,” he says as he touches on another angle to what India could learn from China as related to cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin mining.

“India needs to mine more. The reason China has more advantage than any other geography is because of their power to generate supply. At the end, Bitcoin is like oil, the place of supply is always going to have leverage.”

From mining to trading, China is known to be the epicenter of most Bitcoin related activities.

He added that there is hardly any merchant in India that is accepting Bitcoin but the maximum number of Bitcoin users in the country are traders.

Kalra sees the demonetization move by the Indian government as amazing saying it is encouraging maximum trades to move to the white market and will finally enable India to show the globe its volume.

He cites that the 10% to 20% rate in the price of Bitcoin in India than elsewhere will not likely remain so in the long run because it the increase is not only caused by the demonetization but as well as the supply and India’s lack of enough Bitcoin supply reiterating the need for more local miners.