India’s crypto opportunity shifts from coins to tokenised land and bonds

As institutional investors move into crypto, experts say India’s biggest opportunities may lie in tokenising property and bonds , if regulation, taxation and investor protections catch up.

Cryptocurrencies have moved far beyond the era when they were treated mainly as speculative bets, with the market now stretching from Bitcoin and stablecoins to tokenised versions of real-world assets. In the latest instalment of “Smart Sector for Smart Investor”, a thought series by Zee Business with Kotak Mutual Fund, Sudheer Guntupalli, vice-president of equity research at Kotak Mutual Fund, and Ashish Singhal, co-founder of CoinSwitch, argued that the more important question is not whether crypto survives, but which parts of its ecosystem could become durable parts of finance.

Singhal traced the sector’s origins to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when confidence in banks and intermediaries was badly shaken. He said Bitcoin and blockchain initially appealed because they offered a way to move value without relying on a third party, but the idea has since widened into tokenisation and other forms of so-called trustless finance. Guntupalli said the most important story is not Bitcoin alone, but the larger infrastructure that has built up around it, including stablecoins, blockchain-based settlement systems and the tokenisation of assets, even if he stopped short of calling crypto a fully established structural trend.

The Indian context remains complicated. Singhal said UPI has already solved the payments problem domestically, but argued that stablecoins are filling that gap in markets such as the United States, where payments remain fragmented and slower than many users expect. For India, he pointed to two areas with the clearest potential: land tokenisation and bond tokenisation. He said the Maharashtra government’s proposed DELTA legislation, short for the Digitisation and Exchange of Land Token Assets Act, could eventually allow people to buy fractional interests in property, provided the legal framework gives token holders clear rights. Reporting on the proposal has said Maharashtra wants the law to create a state-backed structure for blockchain-based land and other immovable assets, and that officials are studying how such a system could improve liquidity in an otherwise illiquid market.

That idea is drawing attention because it would try to turn static assets into tradable digital units, a model that supporters say could broaden access and speed up transactions. Commentators on the proposal have noted, however, that the move would still face major hurdles, including title verification, taxation, cybersecurity and the need for a wider regulatory framework. Even so, Business Standard reported that state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has presented the DELTA Act as part of a broader effort to modernise property markets, while other accounts say an expert committee with representatives from the securities and exchanges ecosystem may help shape the rules.

Institutional money is also reshaping the market, Guntupalli said, with spot exchange-traded funds and corporate treasury allocations making crypto easier for large investors to access. He described the asset class as having moved from the fringe to something investable, but added that its risk profile has not been transformed by that shift. Unlike shares or bonds, crypto still lacks the usual valuation anchors such as earnings, coupons or cash flow. Singhal argued that Bitcoin should instead be judged more like an infrastructure layer, with attention paid to adoption, transaction activity, regulatory acceptance and settlement utility. For Indian founders, he said, the bigger obstacle is not ambition but policy: regulation needs to come first, followed by a more workable tax regime, if the country wants to become a serious Web3 hub rather than just a large consumer market.