Bitcoins are making inroads in India as a mode of payment. India currently has around 400,000 bitcoin enthusiasts, with 100,000 of them actually owning the currency. With increasing ease of using them for purchases through mobile apps, bitcoins are quickly transitioning from being trading units to shopping currency.

Just a few years ago, bitcoin owners in the country had few avenues for using the currency. Since the crypto-currency is technology driven, sellers needed to have platforms to accept it. This is where things have changed in recent times. Unocoin, an Indian bitcoin trading platform, launched a 'merchant gateway' which enables business entities to accept bitcoins. This has encouraged several sellers to sign up and accept bitcoins from their customers. Bitcoin is the world’s first open-source, decentralized digital currency and payment network that is changing the world of finance.

Building Unocoin

It all began in 2013 where a few members met at the India Bitcoin meet-up group (now goes by the name "India Bitcoin Blockchain") aiming to take Bitcoin to the masses. Since then, CoinMonk Ventures facilitated and hosted India's first Global Bitcoin Conference in December 2013 where Unocoin was launched on a trial basis. Trade was open for users with a set buying and selling limits. On 1st Feb 2014, Unocoin went off trial mode into full operations.

Throwing light on, Sathvik Vishwanath, Co-Founder &CEO, Unocoin, speaks, "My bitcoin journey started by being an attendee then host of India Bitcoin meetup group in Bangalore, which now has now more than 2500 members. I eventually founded a company in the name of CoinMonk Ventures Private Limited that aims to bring Bitcoin awareness to the public. This company after being an organizer of the Global Bitcoin Conference in Dec 2013 - the first ever Bitcoin conference in India, has launched a web service called Unocoin.com which emphasizes in providing Bitcoin services that includes storage, buying and selling, thereby advancing and accelerating the pursuit of Bitcoin technology. Since then, Unocoin is evolving rapidly and is bringing the advantage of this technology to the critical masses following strict KYC and AML standards to keep its end to end processes compliant and secure for their clients."