The Big Idea (CoinSwitch): Trust by design

The idea behind CoinSwitch did not begin with cryptocurrency trading. It began with a question of access. In 2014, while browsing Reddit, Ashish Singhal came across the Bitcoin white paper written by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Published during the 2008 global financial crisis, it said that money could move between individuals without banks acting as intermediaries.

For Singhal, the proposition resonated because of a personal experience years earlier. As a student from Meerut, he and his mother had spent weeks trying to secure a Rs 2 lakh education loan, only to be caught in endless paperwork and bureaucracy.