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