FIU-IND has issued anti-money-laundering non-compliance notices to 15 offshore crypto platforms serving Indian users, and warned that crypto and NFTs are unregulated.
The warning in the government press release is blunt: “Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions.” FIU-IND issued the notices on Tuesday under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to 15 virtual digital asset service providers, all small and medium-sized operators.
For anyone holding an NFT or trading crypto on an offshore exchange, the message is that India’s AML framework covers platforms, not investors. Registered platforms carry bank-equivalent obligations: keeping records, verifying users and reporting suspicious activity. Someone who loses money on a transaction with an unregistered platform has no regulator to turn to.
The named platforms include Weex, Blofin, Toobit, XT.com and WOO X; the full list is below.
Since March 2023, any platform serving Indian customers must register with FIU-IND whether or not it has an office in India, and then follow those record-keeping and reporting rules.
The Tuesday action escalates a campaign that started bigger and moved down. In December 2023, FIU-IND issued show-cause notices to nine major offshore exchanges including Binance, Kraken and KuCoin, and asked the IT ministry to block their URLs. Binance later registered and paid a record INR 18.82 crore penalty for anti-money-laundering violations.
No responses from any of the 15 flagged platforms have been reported.
Platforms named in the notices
- Weex
- Blofin
- Rezorex
- Bitunix
- DigiFinex
- Toobit
- XT.com
- Latoken
- WOO X
- Pionex
- ChangeNow
- SimpleSwap
- Fixedfloat
- WhiteBIT
- Guardarian
