6. Indian ecosystem will be slow to evolve; limited to speculators and mining pools

The Indian Bitcoin start-up ecosystem today is limited to less than ten startups, including exchanges such as Unocoin, wallet services such as Zuckup, mining pools such as Coinmonk and some other ideas – compared to hundreds of them in each US and China. There is little evidence today to ascertain whether any of these startups are going to create a home market or serve an international market. In fact on the contrary, the Indian market is likely to be served by global Bitcoin companies. For instance, Itbit, a Singapore based exchange has already started targeting Indian consumers. Global services have demonstrated the capability to be credible especially when it comes to convenience and security by solving complex algorithmic problems. This also makes them more defensible in the long run (e.g. Coinbase’s splitting of private keys to prevent theft) and poses a big challenge for Indian Bitcoin start-ups. There is an active Bitcoin community in India (about 15-20 people), which is trying hard to create awareness among consumers and regulators. I sincerely hope to see at least one world-class Bitcoin startup come out of India.