As India Blockchain Week (IBW) unfolded in Bangalore last week, the discussions across panels and side events highlighted how rapidly the country’s crypto ecosystem is evolving, even as regulatory uncertainty continues to persist in India. From workshops on decentralised finance (DeFi) to debates around regulation and innovation, the week offered a sneak peek of where the industry stands in India and globally. 

Among the global executives attending Ignacio Aguirre Franco was Chief Marketing Officer of global crypto major Bitget, the Seychelles-based crypto exchange, which is reimagining itself as a Universal Exchange (UEX). Ignacio, a marketing veteran with over 15 years of leadership across technology and fintech, including stints at Adobe, SAP and Xapo Bank, shared his perspectives on the growing Indian crypto market, global crypto trends, and how Bitget’s strategy to project itself as UEX aligns with the future of finance. 

AI pulse at IBW 2025

Ignacio, speaking about his first IBW 2025 experience, described the overall crypto sentiment in India as “positive” and said that he was struck by the eagerness of participants to learn and build. “When I speak to people, I feel they want more clarity on what’s going to happen in terms of crypto. I was super excited to hear people trying to learn more about it. The crypto community is very hardcore, and we’ve seen the market starting to take off again.”

This groundswell of grassroots interest, says Ignacio, is a strong signal for India’s potential even though Bitget, like many global exchanges, is not yet fully operational in India as it awaits regulatory clarity.

AI has been one of the defining themes of IBW 2025. "You know the saying ‘all roads lead to Rome’? It feels like all conversations lead to AI. It’s becoming a super important part of everyday life. The same way phones eventually became something you can’t live without, AI is now becoming a huge model for us."

Ignacio says Bitget has tried to cash in on the AI trend early, and the company is extensively using AI to flag incidents, map trends, and understand what is happening across the crypto ecosystem. 

He sees AI as an enabler in simplifying people’s lives. “If I wanted to make a trade in the past, I would go to CoinGecko, visit different websites, do all my own research, and spend hundreds of hours on it. Today I can do that with GetAgent. Some people still enjoy doing the research themselves, but if you’re busy and just want to act quickly, it’s great to have everything available in one click.” He shares a similar example about travelling, where one would earlier check several reviews, ratings, but now all queries can be solved using one prompt with ChatGPT. 

‘Regulatory clarity must operate in India’

India has so far adopted a cautious approach to cryptocurrency, despite the country ranking among the top 10 countries globally in transactional use and leading the world in crypto adoption. The government and regulators, such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), have, time and again, maintained that crypto is not legal tender in India, highlighting their volatile nature. At the same time, the government seems to be encouraging the core technological innovations, for example, stablecoins, shaping blockchain innovation.  

Ignacio says regulatory clarity matters the most when it comes to new-age industries like crypto, and that without government clarity, innovation slows down. Notably, Bitget is pursuing registration with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and expects to expand more actively once compliance requirements are met. “For global exchanges, such licences serve as critical gateways to operating in markets that are otherwise restricted due to regulatory ambiguity,” he says.

He highlighted India’s youthful demographic as a structural advantage: “There are so many tech-savvy people, so many young people. That’s a strong indicator of where crypto can work.” 

Notably, India has maintained its top ranking in global cryptocurrency adoption and stablecoin usage for the third consecutive year in seven months of 2025 (Jan-July), according to the latest data by blockchain analytics solutions company TRM Labs. India was followed by countries like the United States (US), Pakistan, the Philippines, and Brazil.

Talking about the company’s India strategy, Ignacio says once the company has the FIU licence, it’ll start tapping into the Indian market in a big way. “India is a young country, so that definitely is a really good indicator for us.”

On the lack of institutional adoption for crypto in India, Ignacio draws an analogy to the music industry’s transition from CDs to streaming: early adopters of Bitcoin were like iPod users, while broader institutional participation, from ETFs to corporate treasuries, marks a shift toward mainstream acceptance. In his view, institutions have started to see digital assets not just as speculative bets but as components of diversified portfolios. "With institutional players jumping on the ship, it pretty much puts a stamp of approval. Not totally sure, but I think BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is the most profitable they’ve had. It’s fast-moving."

Bitget's universal exchange vision

On the operational front, at the heart of Bitget’s product strategy is its Universal Exchange (UEX) vision — a concept that combines the best elements of centralised exchanges (CEX), decentralised exchanges (DEX), and traditional financial instruments into a single, unified platform. Bitget’s October ledger shows assets held on behalf of users at around 10,275 BTC, 134,096 ETH, 1,773,939,676 USDT, and 108,484,792 USDC, translating into ratios at 307% for BTC, 105% for USDT, 224% for ETH, and 129% for USDC, comfortably above 100% across major assets.

Serving over 120 million users across 150+ countries and regions, Bitget has the centralised exchange as its core product, but one can go on-chain directly from the platform, says Franco. “This gives you access to many other assets that you don’t have in a normal way. Normally, you would have to go to another platform to do it. And then you put the TradFi in, and it’s the same thing. So you integrate three different apps that you would have had to access to have everything in one place.” 

The idea is to not let customers feel that they are interacting with an experimental technology, but a new-age financial gateway, which allows users to trade cryptocurrencies alongside tokenised stocks, ETFs, commodities, forex and other real-world assets (RWAs) from one interface, without the friction of multiple platforms.

Notably, Bitget averaged $750 billion in monthly trading volume and surpassed $11.5 trillion in cumulative derivatives trades, as per the latest data. 

On the market’s performance this year, Franco described the post-October correction as healthy, which he said is a part of the cyclical nature of an evolving asset class. He also expressed optimism about crypto’s resilience and the growth ahead. He believes that diversity in capital allocation, from Bitcoin and Ethereum to newer tokens and the integration of real-world assets, is likely to define the next phase. “We’re preparing for what is about to come.”