Blockchain eyes India, adds Bitcoin Cash for its wallet users

Blockchain, a backbone technology that allows digital currency Bitcoin to function, has announced the introduction of Bitcoin Cash to consumers in India.

"We’re supporting Bitcoin Cash with full functionality through the same web wallet. Customers who had bitcoin in their Blockchain wallets prior to August 1 will automatically see an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash reflected in their accounts," the company wrote on its blog.

New users can get started with Bitcoin Cash by simply trading bitcoin or either for Bitcoin Cash using the exchange integration.

"We are thrilled to fully support Bitcoin Cash through our wallet and will continue to find ways to make interacting with digital assets even easier across all of India," Nic Cary, President of Blockchain, said in a statement.

With the addition of Bitcoin Cash, Blockchain is now the largest digital wallet provider for bitcoin, ether and Bitcoin Cash with over 20 million users, the company claimed.

In last one month, the price of bitcoin climbed over 10 percent to 1.99 million yen ($17,594) this month, coinciding with its futures debut on a major US stock exchange.

After demonetisation, India witnessed a surge in use of digital wallets in daily transactions. At present, according to an estimate around 3000 people invest daily in bitcoin in the country.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain directly connects the customers and suppliers, removing the need for using a trusted third party such as a bank to make a transaction. Every single transaction is recorded to the ledger after verification by the network participants, mainly a chain of computers, called nodes.

Once a transaction is entered in the blockchain, it cannot be erased.

Operation in India

Mostly Indians are using the platform to make remittance payments, which are a cross-border international transaction.

Blockchain tied up with Unocoin, one of the largest crypto-currency platforms in India, to enter the Indian market. Unocoin claims to process transactions worth more than Rs 600 million every month for its over four lakh customers.

They run the most widely trusted block explorer and manage the most widely used developer platform in the digital assets eco-system.

In 2014, Blockchain raised the largest first outside capital round in industry history announcing over $30.5 million closed from leading venture capital firms. It recently raised series B funding from Google Ventures and Richard Branson among others. India offers an opportunity to bring affordable digital financial services to people.