The Indian Rupee (INR) has had a rough month in the forex market, losing value despite recent price disinflation in the country. Notably, the US dollar (USD) reached an unprecedented ₹83.44 against the INR in August 2023. This demonstrates the decrease in international buying power of the Indian Rupee.

In this context, Bitcoin (BTC) could be seen as a financial market value index due to its unique properties as a global and supranational monetary system, with the potential to act as a store of value, a means of exchange, and a unit of accounting. Comparing the two, it is clear that BTC is ‘crushing’ INR in terms of price performance.

Since the start of 2023, Bitcoin has had a 74.39% rise in price against the INR. On January 1, it was ₹1,657,684 per BTC, and it has risen to ₹2,884,539 per BTC at the time of writing. In September alone, Bitcoin has gained over 3% against the INR, despite a negative month against the USD. Furthermore, since April 2020, Bitcoin has increased in value by 300% when measured in INR, according to data from TradingView from BitBNS centralized exchange.

This raises the question: should India consider adopting Bitcoin to avoid the loss of its people’s purchasing power? It is a difficult question to answer, but there are signs that India is becoming increasingly open to cryptocurrencies. According to a report by Finbold in June 2023, using data from Triple-A, India is the second most populous country in terms of crypto holders, with 27 million people owning crypto, behind the US with 46 million.