New Delhi, March 15 -- For years, crypto trades and the digital asset space itself operated in what many describe as a regulatory no-man's land. An investor in Mumbai could open an account on an exchange in any offshore financial hub with a flexible regulatory and tax regime, freely trade digital assets, and remain largely beyond the visibility of Indian authorities.

The Union budget of 2026 seeks to change that. Through a series of legislative changes introduced across the budgets of 2025 and 2026, India has operationalized a reporting framework aligned with the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), aiming to move crypto from an opaque asset class into a transparent financial instrument integrated with the global tax reporting...