Our guest for this episode is Rahul Raj, CEO and co-founder of Koinex (https://koinex.in/). Koinex is one of India’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges and peer to peer marketplaces which is backed by leading investors such as Pantera Capital (https://www.panteracapital.com/) and Beenext (https://www.beenext.com/).
Rahul is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and has dabbled in various startups and social entrepreneurship initiatives before starting Koinex.
Tune in to hear about:
- Rahul’s background and intro
- How Koinex (India’s first KYC compliant multi currency exchange) came about
- Why Koinex initially decided to have only fiat to crypto pairs for all cryptocurrencies
- Customer journey for transacting
- Different steps involved in setting up a crypto exchange
- Three important pillars of setting up an exchange: scalability, security, customer support
- Other factors to consider while setting up an exchange: UI/UX, liquidity, ecosystem development
- Building an exchange in house vs. using a white label solution/third party integrations – pros and cons
- Where does an exchange source their crypto from?
- How Koinex built liquidity on the platform
- Highest daily trading volume that Koinex saw – USD 265m
- Why BTC was trading at a premium in India
- Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) current stance on crypto and way going forward
- How the crypto-exchanges responded to the RBI directive
- Koinex Loop (https://koinex.in/loop) – the crypto marketplace
- Improvements of Koinex Loop over LocalBitcoin and LocalEthereum
- Challenges with Koinex Loop as far as fiat is concerned
- Koinex’s roadmap and plans beyond an exchange
- Views on the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency ecosystem in India
- Projects beyond Koinex that Rahul is excited about: Ethereum, BAT