Indian Crypto Investment Platform Mudrex Expands to Italy

Indian cryptocurrency investment platform Mudrex has successfully registered to operate in Italy, CEO and co-founder Edul Patel told CoinDesk in an interview Friday.

The international move by Bengaluru-based Mudrex is rare for Indian entities that have mostly struggled due to harsh taxes and a global crypto winter. Even rarer is its "bullish plan" for global expansion, revealed in this detail for the first time. "Half our team is working on international expansion," said Patel.

Mudrex has also started the approval process to operate in the U.K., he said.

Mudrex was approved for registration with Italy's Organismo Agenti e Mediatori (OAM), a mandatory step for crypto firms, on Sep. 1, 2023. OAM is the local legal entity which maintains lists of financial agents operating in the country subject to the nation's anti-money-laundering requirements. "We just wanted some time to pass after the approval before we made the news public," said Patel.

Mudrex has only one million registered users but is one of India's largest crypto platforms that offer index investing options through sets of coins called Coin Sets as an alternative to speculative trading. This includes small, mid and large cap, BTC and ETH in the broad-based category. The thematic indexes include layer one, layer two, NFT, Metaverse projects and Dow trackers.

"While India is our base and where we grew up, customers abroad told us investment products there are all the same," said Patel. "We believe that our product is unique and has some very different offerings."

Patel said we chose Italy because a survey by Italy's securities regulator Consob on financial investments of Italian households revealed data points that suited our products such as higher risk diversification, higher gross saving and higher knowledge of crypto than most other EU nations. "We shortlisted through this research but Italy gave us the best results on the ground."

According to Mudrex, the Italian foray was made easier because the company had already fulfilled the requirements to operate in the EU after obtaining a licence in Lithuania less than a year ago. In the six months it pursued registration in Italy, Mudrex's presence in the EU rose from around 5,000 users to 17,000.

"Now we can offer our investment products via all other registered entities like banking partner apps and we are in talks with them," Patel said.

Read More: Italy Hasn't Vetted the 73 Crypto Firms It Approved This Year