A utility token issued by India’s leading cryptocurrency exchange has soared after the country’s cryptocurrency community won a battle for acceptance with the banking system.

At 11.22am AEST, WazirX‘s WRX token was up more than 50 per cent to US$1.96, recovering almost fully from the March 19 crash. Earlier this morning it was trading as high as US$2.26.

The No. 96 crypto, WRX is a utility coin used to pay for fees on the Mumbai-based, Binance-owned WazirX exchange.

The gains came after the Reserve Bank of India advised India’s banks that they couldn’t rely on an order that the central bank issued in April 2018 banning cryptocurrency sales.

That order was struck down by the country’s Supreme Court in March 2020, but some banks were still reportedly citing it in emails to customers deplatforming them for buying crypto.

#IndiaWantsCrypto was the second-place trending item on Twitter in India after RBI’s advisory.

WazirX chief executive Nischal Shetty had been asking the RBI to intervene, saying that banking issues were hurting an industry that employs over 1,000 Indians in more than 350 startups.

“India cannot sit on the sidelines and miss this innovation. We cannot lose our software edge as a nation,” he tweeted last week.
 

Mina Protocol at all-time high on new listings

Mina Protocol (MINA) was the second-best top 100 gainer this morning, and also the second top 100 coin to hit an all-time high since the May 19 crash. Helium (HNT) did so over the weekend.

Mina was trading at US$8.97 at noon AEST after being newly listed on OKEx and Kraken.

The No. 79 crypto, Mina uses a cryptographic tool known as zk-SNARKS to compress the size of its blockchain to just 22kb, compared to hundreds of gigabytes on Bitcoin and Ethereum. That means that connecting to the Mina network is much quicker.

The San Fransisco-based project was once known as the Coda Protocol but rebranded in September after a trademark lawsuit.
 

BTC hits four-day high; nearly everything gains

Meanwhile, Bitcoin had pulled back slightly after hitting a four-day high of US$37,836 at 10:40am AEST.

But BTC was still up 6.5 per cent to US$37,929 ($47,500) at 12.20AEST.

Ethereum was changing hands at US$2,628 ($3,394), up 14.5 per cent from 24 hours ago.

More than three dozen of the top 100 coins were up more than 10 per cent, with Theta Fuel, Aave and Kusama (and the aforementioned WazirX and Mina) up by more than 20 per cent.

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Coin360

Of the top 100 tokens, only stablecoins were in the red. (Such tokens are inversely correlated to the market, often trading for slightly less than their US$1 peg when most coins are gaining).

 

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