Gift cards and p2p exchange for fiat using a dex or another service. As long as there is money to be made, the Indian crypto black market will thrive and grow.
Bitcoin allows any Indian with a cellphone to easily exploit global arbitrage opportunities (BTC/INR and */INR to /) , bypass capital controls, and save money in a medium that the Indian government cannot debase. At least a few million people (especially the international traveler class) will find these characteristics extremely valuable whatever the status of local regulation.
Forgive me for being skeptical, but I’ve never seen Bitcoin used as a medium of exchange. You could argue it’s a store of value, but that’s also contentious. In the last year, it’s back to its original price. So much for being an inflation hedge.
In this case, no legitimate seller would be allowed to sell you physical goods for cryptocurrencies - you'd have to buy some physical goods abroad and then import them or the money (India does not have free movement of capital across the border).
Just checking possibilities here. Let's say you want to buy my house and I want to sell it to you. We are in India. You transfer crypto to my wallet then I, in return, donate my house to you. Would this donation work on the legal papers today? I suspect that in Brazil, where I live today, it would.
Sure, a black market is possible - I explicitly mentioned legitimate sellers.
But why would you want to sell a house this way instead for a permitted means of payment? Even if your scheme is unlikely to be detected, if does add a nontrivial risk of getting detected (or getting intentionally exposed, or blackmailed to get exposed) and get very unpleasant consequences for that, and given the extra difficulties of enforcing the deal, you would likely expect a significant extra markup above "normal price" to sell the house this way. Furthermore, if this is criminalized, then even offering or requesting this as an option carries some risk.
Also, I'm not informed of Indian law, but in most western countries this "donation of house" would definitely incur a significant tax and possibly trigger a tax audit/money laundering investigation. Combined with the risk markup, that would meant that laundering cryptocurrencies would be somewhat expensive. Not impossible, of course, money gets laundered - but it would mean that you would actually have to follow all the inconveniences, risks and costs of a money laundering process if you'd want to handle cryptocurrency, and that would discourage many people from doing so.
> But why would you want to sell a house this way instead for a permitted means of payment?
I can think of a few reasons. The buyer offers you a large premium, you know people who can help you offload the currency, you have no interest in keeping your capital in a controlled environment, maybe you're selling your house because you're leaving a country and taking bitcoin or whatever is the easiest way to take your capital with you.
1) I'm not familiar with tax laws in India (or Brazil) but in many places this would trigger gift taxes, imposing a large financial overhead to this transaction.
2) The regulatory bodies monitoring for illegal transactions will see right through this one.
How do you exchange your cryptos? You would need an account at a Singaporean bank. Then spend your savings in Singapore, and go back to India empty handed?
Well obviously there's going to be a level of trust seeing as recourse is narrower, just like any black market transaction. Maybe even some possibility of extralegal recourse. But people can and therefore will do it.
How are you supposed to trust the person who you are buying goods from will deliver once they receive the payment. As they will anyways be illegaly selling the goods for crypto there will be even more mistrust. If you do payment after delivery then the other side needs to be trusted.
Maybe doing your research before buying something online same as with cash payments is a good idea. I'd pick a vendor who accepts crypto besides fiat, I assure you there are lots of them.
The point is that there might be no public info. If you can research using public info, then government could research too of the places which delivers goods for crypto and could order one for themselves and track the package through courier.
You are taking this too seriously. Do you really think that the Indian government will start investigating every incoming package to the country if the webshop it originated from accepts crypto? In a country if 1.3B+ people?