India Bans 25 Crypto Apps Like BingX Overnight, Billions in Volume Frozen
Drastic action by India against crypto last month led to the targeting of 25 offshore exchanges by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU, IND) in October 2025, among them were BingX, LBank, and CoinW, for anti money laundering (AML) violations. These platforms were running operations without PMLA registration, which led to immediate app removals from Google Play and Apple stores and website blocking in the whole country. Billions of dollars in trading volume came to a standstill as Indian users, who are one of the top crypto adopters globally, were left with no other option but to search for alternatives in the midst of the 30% tax and 1% TDS regime that was already stifling the market.
The Trigger: Unregistered Offshore Havens
FIU, IND gave the exchanges a chance to explain their actions before it took them to court. After a long time of warnings, it found these exchanges not reporting suspicious transactions and not verifying users in line with anti money laundering laws. Among others, Paxful and MEXC were reprimanded for allowing users to easily convert crypto to fiat without KYC, thus illegally laundering money in a country where crimes related to crypto reached their peak in 2024, 2025.
This is similar to the situation when Binance and KuCoin were targeted and had to pay big fines (Bybit paid ₹9.27 crore only to be able to restart). Regulators said it was done to save over 100M users from “unscrupulous actors,” but traders argued that they lost access to low fee altcoin pairs.
The bans brought the trading volume, which was in the tens of billions of INR equivalent, to almost zero in a night, and it was BingX that was most affected as it was handling massive rupee pairs. Telegram and Reddit became the platforms where Indian traders expressed their problems intensely, such as the situation of withdrawals being locked, and the compelled migration to FIU compliant locals like CoinDCX or WazirX, ironically, the latter was victims of their own hacks earlier in 2025.
Within 48 hours, the disappearance of offshore apps from stores was noticed by the public, while the closure of domains by ISPs was another step in the game, which users VPN hopping couldn’t solve. Critics considered the move as “overkill” in a market with high adoption, but according to FIU data, the non compliant platforms were responsible for 70% of the suspicious activities that were flagged.
Broader Implications for Global Crypto
That’s not the only case. Now, besides this, India’s FIU is also looking at implementing deeper VDA oversight with the possibility of a penalty of 10 years in jail for those who are repeat offenders. Exchanges were in a hurry to submit their compliance documents but the atmosphere of fear is still there: global volumes have dropped by 15% due to India exposure as the whales have moved their activities to places like Dubai or Singapore.
For the users, it serves as a warning sign, only from registered players can one expect security of their funds. According to a Delhi trader’s post, “Lost my alt bag chasing 0.1% fees. Lesson learned.” This move indicates how India is trying to balance the two things: benefit from the crypto boom while at the same time not letting the risk of laundering explode.
