Bybit Restricted Trading and Deposits for Indian Customers

Bybit’s restrictions on Indian customers took effect at 08:00 UTC on January 12, 2025, temporarily shutting off new trades and most platform products while the cryptocurrency exchange pursued registration with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit. Withdrawals remained available.

The operational change was more than a website-access problem. Bybit said Indian users could no longer place new orders across trading products, while existing derivatives positions moved to close-only mode: customers could reduce or exit them but could not add to or modify them. Cryptocurrency and fiat-currency deposits were suspended. Indian-rupee peer-to-peer advertisements were scheduled for removal at the same effective time, and Bybit Card transactions were restricted.

A compliance deadline reached the trading screen

Bybit announced the measure on January 10 and described it as a response to recent regulatory developments and a continuation of earlier restrictions. The exchange said it was working to complete registration as a virtual digital asset service provider in India. It did not identify a new statute or publish an Indian regulator’s directive with the announcement.

That limitation matters. The verified January 12 event was Bybit’s implementation of its own customer restrictions, not a newly announced national ban on cryptocurrency and not a finding, available that day, that Indian customers had acted unlawfully. Contemporaneous reporting by The Block independently described the 08:00 UTC start, withdrawal exception and close-only treatment of derivatives.

The customer impact depended on the product. Spot and derivatives users lost the ability to open new positions. Deposit routes were paused, but asset withdrawals remained open. Copy-trading relationships and trading bots were to be terminated before 05:00 UTC on January 13, extending the wind-down beyond the initial restriction time. The surviving records do not quantify affected accounts, customer assets or India-specific Bybit volume, so those totals cannot be responsibly inferred.

Why FIU registration mattered

The regulatory framework predated January 12. India’s Department of Revenue brought specified virtual-digital-asset activities within the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in March 2023. A Financial Intelligence Unit circular dated July 4, 2023 listed exchange between digital assets and fiat currencies, exchange between different digital assets, transfers, safekeeping, and certain issuer-related financial services among the covered activities.

The circular treated service providers carrying out those activities as reporting entities. Registration was tied to anti-money-laundering duties rather than to recognition of crypto as legal tender or a comprehensive licensing law for token markets. This distinction explains the institutional significance of Bybit’s pause: access to a global trading venue was being conditioned by a country-level reporting and compliance regime even without a broad crypto prohibition.

For exchanges operating across borders, the January 12 change illustrated how compliance status could translate directly into product controls. For users, it separated custody access from trading access: withdrawals continued while deposits, new exposure and other services were restricted. That design reduced some immediate lock-in risk but still constrained how open positions and peer-to-peer activity could be managed.

What was not yet known

On January 12, Bybit’s registration outcome and the duration of the restrictions were unresolved. There was no event-day basis to claim that full service would return on a particular date, that FIU-IND had approved the exchange, or that a penalty had been imposed.

Later official context

On January 31, 2025, India’s Ministry of Finance said FIU-IND had found Bybit in violation of reporting-entity obligations and imposed a penalty of 92.7 million Indian rupees. That later order clarified the regulatory dispute but was not available when the restrictions began. It does not change the narrow event-day conclusion: on January 12, Bybit blocked new trading and most products for Indian users while leaving withdrawals available.