Mudrex will give Indian crypto investors access to US spot bitcoin ETFs

Indian investors will soon have access to US spot-bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with crypto trading platform Mudrex set to offer the facility to institutional and retail investors, the company’s CEO and co-founder Edul Patel has said.

The Indian cryptocurrency investment platform plans to list four spot ETFs— Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, Fidelity, and Vanguard, Coindesk reported.

“This is much more valuable to institutions, as this was already available to retailers,” Patel said. “We are certainly the first Indian crypto platform to offer this service.” Retail clients already had access to spot-bitcoin ETFs through US stock investing companies and Mudrex would be the first to facilitate this for institutions.

The Y-Combinator-backed firm based in California has a subsidiary registered in India. According to the report, Mudrex will make sure that the actual transaction is processed through United States-based broker partners, while the company’s Indian subsidiary will provide the spot-bitcoin ETF service.

"The bitcoin spot ETF works as a security and Indians are allowed to purchase securities under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) and, as a result, users or institutions specifically, who do want to get access to bitcoin can now start using the bitcoins through ETFs to diversify their portfolio," Patel was quoted as saying.

“The LRS is the tricky part for most people and over there (in the US), because we also have strong banking relationships, we're able to help users do these transactions in a very seamless way, and that's why these services are important,” he said.The Reserve Bank of India has an overall LRS limit of $250,000 annually. On the Mudrex platform, Indian investors will be able to invest in spot bitcoin ETFs with a minimum of $5,000 and a maximum of $250,000.