BENGALURU: The crypto market has been expanding from just 5 million people worldwide in 2018 to 25 million today, growing 500% in past four years. Crypto is the world’s fastest-growing asset class, and if this continues, by the end of 2025, it will be the world’s largest asset class in terms of the number of people participating in it, and there will be 100 million people in crypto by 2025, said Edul Patel, co-founder and CEO of Mudrex, the largest crypto index investing platform.
In an interaction with TNIE, he said, “Of 24-25 million people, traders constitute only 11 million. Nearly 65% of users in crypto are retail investors, and most of these people have come into crypto-only in last year, and these are the people that need help in investing over the longer run.” The retail crypto market did not exist 15 months ago, and the kind of products that were built in crypto till 2021 was by keeping only traders in mind.
Retail investors have just come in, and in the next 18-24 months, as the retail audience grows from 12 million to 30 million, more products will be coming for them. "We need to make sure that products created for them are simpler, easier to understand that there is regulatory protection," Patel added. Mudrex has over half a million users, and 90% of them are from India. The company is working with regulators and applying for licenses in Turkey, the US, Canada and Australia.
Talking about the regulation, Patel said, “We can’t expect things to change overnight. The job of a regulator and that of a company are two different things. Financial services are the most regulated industry worldwide.” Regulators typically take longer as they are looking for a 10-20 year horizon. They will necessarily not push forward a decision in haste. What people look for is certainty and the regulator has to be certain before they change anything, the CEO said.
Patel said there were a lot of positive sentiments while speaking to officials in the RBI. They were positive about the technology, and they were negative in the way cryptos are marketed today, he said.
Since many crypto companies are being launched in India, more competition means more people are working in educating regulators, he added.