Kya Crypto safe hai? Regulator vs advisors, SEBI issues diktat hitting 1 crore investors

Over 1 crore crypto investors watched as SEBI faced off with popular investment advisors on the 'safety' of and legality of the digital tokens. With Bitcoin at a record high, SHIB up 40,000,000% crypto betters are growing at a fast pace. . All the large cryptocurrency exchanges saw at least a 100% increase in their trading and investment in the last few months.

As the advertisments around the festive season took centrestage with many advising a bet on the booming crypto market Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a notice asking registered investment advisors to refrain from dealing in 'unregulated' products.

"It has come to the notice of SEBI that some registered Investment Advisers are engaged in unregulated activity by providing platform for buying/selling/dealing in unregulated products including digital gold," the SEBI said in an October 21 notice.

Referring to the SEBI's notice, Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath highlighted that this was the reason why his platforms don't offer crypto. Kamath tweeted, "When you are regulated, everything is normally black & white. People keep asking me why don't we offer crypto, unlisted private companies, US stocks, digital gold — which we anyways didn't sell because it's not the best way to buy gold, and more."

Even as regulators and the government keep a check on the crypto market, some big names in the industry are catching eyes. India's first crypto unicorn, CoinDCX, got some flack on social media as its recent ad in a newspaper raised some questions pertaining to investors' safety.

Alok Jain, a SEBI registered investment advisor and founder of Weekendinvesting.com, tweeted that a decisive policy on crypto and regulation on crypto exchanges should come now. He also posted the picture of the ad which used words like 'safe hai' and 'future yahi hai' which may have been seen as misleading.

Domestic crypto exchange platforms have been roping in Bollywood celebrities and social media influencers. Actors like Ranveer Singh and Ayushmann Khurana signed as brand ambassadors for popular crypto platforms Coinswitch Kuber and CoinDCX.

This comes even as regulators around the world have been warning influencers and actors to stay away from promoting speculative cryptocurrencies. Kim Kardashian, a few weeks ago, was warned by the U.K. financial regulator.