Cryptocurrency trading witness massive surge in India during COVID-19 lockdown

New Delhi: Trading in Cryptocurrencies have witnessed massive rise during the nationwide lockdown to contain COVID-19 pandemic, media reports said.

Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual currencies in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of their units and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank.

Analysts believe that the boom was due to the lifting of curbs on Cryptocurrencies by SC. Though trading in Cryptocurrencies have long been banned in India, the ban was lifted this year by the Supreme Court. The SC had in March allowed banks and financial institutions from providing services related to cryptocurrencies by setting aside the RBI's 2018 circular which had prohibited them. Several pleas, challenging the RBI circular were filed including that of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) which had argued that no prior studies were conducted to analyse their effect on the economy

Meanwhile, Twitter accounts of several prominent people including former US president Barack Obama, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, were hacked on Wednesday in an apparent bid to promote a Bitcoin scam.

The posts all included the address of the same bitcoin wallet, which has seen as much as USD 112,000 pour into it over the last few hours while it is unclear if this money came from unsuspecting users or the scammers themselves.

The attackers posted tweets that appeared to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The fake tweets offered to send USD 2,000 for every USD 1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.