Coinbase Reopens Its Doors in India After Two-Year Pause, Begins Careful Market Reentry

• Coinbase has reopened registrations for users in India, quietly relaunching through an early-access program in October, two years after scaling back operations due to regulatory pressure.
• Coinbase aims to reintroduce a rupee on-ramp in 2026, which would allow users to move local currency directly into the app to purchase tokens.
• The relaunch occurs despite a difficult tax environment in India, which imposes a 30% tax on digital-asset income and a 1% tax deducted at source on every trade.

Coinbase has reopened registrations for users in India more than two years after scaling back operations amid regulatory pressure.

According to a report from TechCrunch, It seems the exchange quietly relaunched via an early-access program in October and has now made sign-ups broadly available.

Asia-Pacific director John O’Loghlen said at India Blockchain Week that Coinbase aims to bring back a rupee on-ramp in 2026, which would again let users move local currency into the app to buy tokens directly.

We had millions of customers in India, historically, and we took a very clear stance to off-board those customers entirely from overseas entities, where they were domiciled and regulated. Because we wanted to kind of burn the boats [sic], have a clean slate here. As a commercial business person wanting to make money and active users, that’s like the worst thing you can do, and so you know it wasn’t without some hesitation.

Coinbase Asia-Pacific director, John O’Loghlen.

The relaunch comes against a difficult policy backdrop. Specifically, India imposes a 30% tax on digital-asset income with no provision to offset losses, plus a 1% tax deducted at source on every trade. 

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A Government Tax Problem

The government has collected about US$818 million (AU$1.2 billion) in crypto-related taxes since introducing the regime in 2022, including US$323 million (AU$494 million) in the first year and US$525 million (AU$803 million) in 2023-2024.

Those rules have drained onshore liquidity and made local operations more complex, even as large global exchanges move back in.

But all things considered, India remains one of the fastest-growing countries when it comes to crypto adoption, and it has been for the third year in a row, ranking first across all four subindexes covering centralised retail, DeFi, institutional activity, and decentralised services.

Other major exchanges have also moved to restore their presence in India. Both Bybit and Binance re-entered the market (though Binance had to pay a small fee of a few million dollars).

Read more: IMF Warns Fragmented Global Rules Could Undermine Stablecoin Market Stability

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