Except, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the regulatory body which regulates and runs UPI, wasn’t exactly in on the plan. So it made its displeasure public by releasing a press release, which was exactly one sentence long.

Coinbase realised that it had said something it shouldn’t have and quickly disabled UPI as a payment method on its app and website. 

But it was too late. 

And not just for Coinbase, but for everybody. 

Suddenly, almost overnight, crypto had been cursed. 

The crazy part is that it’s not like Coinbase did something others hadn’t done. Earlier this week, The Hindu reported that crypto exchanges had been offering UPI as a payment option since March, and how they’d been constantly changing their IDs because their IDs would keep getting blocked. 

This just reminds me of a popular theatre superstition called the Macbeth curse, which claims that speaking the name Macbeth inside a theatre will invite disaster. This is why performers refuse to call the play by its name, and usually just refer to it as ‘the scottish play’, or something vague like that. The idea is that if you say the word Macbeth, bad things will happen.

Coinbase’s problem wasn’t that it did something others hadn’t done. 

The problem was that Coinbase said the words out loud. 

And the curse fell. 

All throughout history, the way cults proliferate and broaden their power and influence is by recruiting new members. It usually begins with a revolutionary idea, which is marketed and sold to non-believers, and over time, some of them start to believe. The more members you get, the bigger your marketing team becomes and the flywheel is set into motion. And then, it’s just a matter of time before your members are exchanging things of value using dog currency. 

And all of this was before the payments freeze which hit crypto companies last week. 

Add to this the war in Ukraine and rising petroleum prices, which have spooked investors all over and will, in all likelihood, lead to a drying up of funding for crypto companies. For many venture capital (VCs) firms, crypto is a moonshot bet, and few will invest in moonshots when the situation at home is dire. 

So, yeah, for all these reasons, crypto is cursed in India. 

But for how long? 

Well, we don’t know. But I have an answer. 

However, for that, I’ll have to share a story about Swiss watches. It’s a story I heard from a couple of my friends (who collect and know more about watches than I do) a few weeks back. 

If you’ve ever been to a train station in Switzerland, you’ll see something special about all the clocks in the place. The clocks themselves are quite minimal and beautiful, and they’re all over Switzerland.

The strange part is what happens when the second hand of the clock hits zero. Instead of continuing on, it does something really weird. It just stops for a couple of seconds.

But why?

It’s going to feel a lot longer than two seconds, though. 

But until then, crypto is cursed.