[brycehamrick]

Cryptocurrency exchanges do fall under KYC in the US and only if you want to do certain things, like purchases over a certain volume or fiat withdraws. There's no reason someone in India, for example, would need to go through a KYC process simply to buy a small amount of cryptocurrency. There's also plenty of P2P networks like LocalBitcoins that fit this use case much better than an exchange.

[umeshunni]

> There's no reason someone in India, for example, would need to go through a KYC process simply to buy a small amount of cryptocurrency.

Except for local laws which explicitly require KYC for crypto transactions: https://bitcoin-india.org/kyc_aml_policy

[brycehamrick]

That appears to be one exchanges policy, not law. There may be a law I'm unaware of but in any case this wouldn't come into play using something like LocalBitcoins. Exchanges need to do this in order to conduct transactions with banks—obviously something that isn't needed for unbanked populations.

[lawn]

You're not wrong, but LocalBitcoins will also require KYC now.