Is BitSave legal in India? Structure, regulation and what you can verify

In this article we cover:

1. Is BitSave legal in India?
2. Is BitSave regulated, and what does regulated mean for crypto in India?
3. Is BitSave FIU-IND registered?
4. Does BitSave operate offshore?
5. Does BitSave report your transactions to Indian tax authorities?
6. Where are your assets actually held?
7. Has BitSave been independently audited?
8. So is BitSave's structure a red flag?
9. What you can verify yourself, today

What BitSave is, and what it is not

Every row above can be checked without BitSave's help. Section 9 explains where to look.

Is BitSave legal in India?

Yes. An Indian resident can legally buy, hold and sell virtual digital assets, and BitSave can legally offer them all three. Crypto investments are not banned in India. India tried prohibition once, and it did not hold. In 2018 the RBI barred the banks it regulates from serving crypto businesses. The Supreme Court set that circular aside in March 2020, on the ground that a blanket ban was disproportionate. What followed was not a ban but a tax and reporting regime. It is taxed under Schedule VDA of the Income Tax Act, which is a form of recognition and not prohibition.

No Indian law prohibits an individual from owning crypto. The government taxes gains on it at 30%, with 1% TDS on transfers, and requires platforms to report those transfers. A country does not build a tax and reporting regime around an activity it has outlawed or declared illegal.

In the case of BitSave, your rupees are handled by an India-registered entity, BitPe Digital LLP, which processes domestic INR and handles distribution. The investment product itself is built and operated by group entities described in section 4.

What BitSave is not: it remains in process to get registered with FIU-IND, and like any other crypto investing app, it is not regulated by SEBI. Neither of those is a statement about legality. The next two sections explain why the category treats them as if they were.

Is BitSave regulated, and what does regulated mean for crypto in India?

BitSave is not regulated, and neither is any other crypto investment platform in India, whether it operates as an exchange, trading or investment platform. No Indian regulator licenses crypto investment products. SEBI covers capital markets. RBI covers banking and financial services, crypto currently falls out of the scope of both. It is taxed under Schedule VDA and monitored with respect to KYC, AML and CFT norms through FIU-IND.

The perimeter is worth setting out once, because the category rarely does.

SEBI regulates investments and capital markets. Equities, mutual funds, index funds, brokers. It currently does not cover crypto investments, for BitSave or for anyone else. Crypto may be bought and held as an investment, which is capital markets activity in everything but name. It has not been brought inside those definitions.

RBI regulates banking and financial services such as payments, remittances, lending and loans. A payments or remittance business sits here. It does not license crypto investment products either. Crypto payments, crypto remittances and crypto lending all exist. They sit outside RBI’s definitions, not outside its subject matter.

Between them, SEBI and RBI cover what the industry calls traditional finance, or TradFi. Crypto is the asset class that has not been let in.

FIU-IND is the Financial Intelligence Unit of India, which sits under the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance. It monitors financial transactions across the whole system, not only crypto. Banks, NBFCs, mutual funds and capital markets are all inside its remit. Its mandate is to make sure money is not used, directly or indirectly, for money laundering or terror financing.

That mandate is important, and it is specific. FIU-IND registration covers three things: KYC, anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT). However it currently does not carry provisions for consumer protection unlike market regulators such as SEBI, RBI or IRDAI. The practical consequence is the part the category rarely says out loud. Even registered platforms in India have been hacked, and their users are yet to get their money back in many instances. Registration tells the government where the money moved but has not improved safety and custody issues.

Is BitSave FIU-IND registered?

The registration is in process. BitSave's application was filed in August 2023,  all required submissions stand completed and the team now awaits further direction from the Department. At the time of writing this piece, BitSave does not hold an FIU-IND registration number, and the registration remains in process.

That is the position. BitSave is currently an applicant, not registered.

Does BitSave operate offshore?

Partly, and the structure is published. Three entities run the platform. Casper Wealth Holdings Limited owns the platform technology and is registered in ADGM, Abu Dhabi. The group entity, BitPe Digital LLP is India-registered and handles domestic INR processing and distribution. Casper Wealth Inc develops the index products.

A cross-border structure is ordinary in this category and in several others. Nothing here is an outward remittance. You pay rupees to an India-registered entity, so the investment does not draw on your LRS limit and does not attract TCS on foreign remittance.

The structure is also published on the BitSave trust page.

These three are the only entities that run the platform. BitSave previously operated from Seychelles. The investment products no longer operate from there.

Does BitSave report your transactions to Indian tax authorities?

Yes. TDS is deducted and reported on both legs of your investment, the purchase and the sale. Those deductions go to the income tax department and appear in your own tax credit statement. Nothing has to be assembled or reconciled by you for that to happen.

The mechanic is simple. Buying a unit involves a transfer of a virtual digital asset, which triggers TDS and generates a report. Selling triggers it again on the way out. Both land in your own tax record. The TDS credit appears in your annual tax credit statement, long known as Form 26AS and now issued as Form 168 under the Income Tax Act 2025. Your Annual Information Statement, the AIS, carries the broader record of reported virtual digital asset activity.

The running total is visible while the year is still in progress. Tax Corner in the app shows the TDS deducted for the financial year to date, and a tax statement can be requested from the same screen, in a format a CA can work from. If you want the fuller picture of when the 30% applies and what a rebalance costs, that is covered in crypto tax in India, what every rebalance actually costs.

To sum it up, registration is a status. You either hold it or you do not, and a reader cannot verify it beyond checking a list. Reporting is an event. It either happened or it did not, and the reader can check it in a document that belongs to them.

Where are your assets actually held?

With an institutional custodian, in cold storage and off BitSave's balance sheet. Keys are held offline and split across geographies, using multi-party computation. The cold-storage assets carry Lloyd's of London cover placed directly on the assets, which applies to the assets in cold storage and not to falls in their market value.

The custodian is a third party, not a BitSave company. That separation is the point. Assets held off BitSave's balance sheet are not part of the platform's own finances, so they do not sit inside the pool a creditor would claim against.

Your holding is recorded as a unit token issued against the underlying basket, rather than as coins in your name. That distinction is what keeps the assets off BitSave's books. The mechanism is explained in why BitSave issues unit tokens, not coins.

BitSave publishes reserves and liabilities on-chain, verifiable at any hour, so that the assets can be reconciled against outstanding client units. What happens to those assets if the platform stops operating is a longer question, covered separately.

Has BitSave been independently audited?

Yes. Grant Thornton Bharat LLP completed a cybersecurity audit against CERT-In requirements, assessing 26 domains, all of which were found compliant. The audit is mandated by FIU-IND as part of the registration process. It examines security controls. It is not a financial audit, and it is not a licence.

An audit of one thing is not an assurance of everything, and it is worth being precise about which thing. This one covers cybersecurity practice. Reserves are addressed separately, on-chain and continuously, which is a different kind of evidence. Details of the audit are on the BitSave press page and it was also covered in the press.

So is BitSave's structure a red flag?

Not for the reason the question implies. BitSave was built around a known issue in crypto exchanges and trading platforms: client assets sit on the platform's own balance sheet, and when one fails its customers become unsecured creditors with little visibility into where their assets went.

The registration gap is real, and it is what people usually mean when they call the structure a red flag. BitSave does not hold an FIU-IND registration. If that single marker is what you need before you invest, it does not have it yet.

It is worth knowing what that registration examines. FIU-IND looks at how and where money moves, and whether the flow makes tax evasion possible. That is its job. It does not examine whose name the assets sit in, whether they are held separately from the company's own balance sheet, whether reserves match liabilities, or what a customer would recover if the platform stopped operating. Those are the questions that decided outcomes when Indian platforms failed, and no registration answered them.

BitSave's structure was designed for that second set of questions. You hold a unit token that records your share. The assets sit with an institutional custodian, off BitSave's balance sheet, which is what keeps them outside the company's own finances. Reserves and liabilities are published on-chain so that the two can be reconciled against each other at any hour. Your transactions are reported on both legs and appear in your own tax record. An independent cybersecurity audit is complete. The corporate structure is published, including the part of it that is offshore.

None of that substitutes for a registration, and it is not offered as one. It answers a different set of questions, and those happen to be the ones that determine what you are left holding. 

What you can verify yourself, today

Six checks, in the order they are easiest to run.

1. Your annual tax credit statement, Form 26AS or Form 168, and look for the TDS entries against your BitSave transactions. Your AIS shows the same activity in more detail.

2. Tax Corner in the BitSave app. It shows the TDS deducted this financial year, and a tax statement can be requested from the same screen.3. BitSave's published reserves and liabilities and reconcile assets against outstanding client units.4. The entity structure on the BitSave trust page and check each entity in its own registry.5. Ask for the audit scope in writing, and read what it covers.

None of the five requires BitSave's cooperation, which is the point of the list. Start at the trust page, and BitSave's company record is public on LinkedIn.

FAQs

Is BitSave legal in India?
Yes. Indian residents can legally buy, hold and sell virtual digital assets, and BitSave can legally offer them. Crypto is taxed under Schedule VDA rather than banned. BitSave's Indian entity, BitPe Digital LLP, handles domestic INR processing and does TDS reporting for each buy and sale..

Is BitSave FIU-IND registered?
Not yet. The application was filed in August 2023 and the registration is in process. 

Is crypto regulated by SEBI in India?
No. SEBI regulates capital markets, and crypto investment sits outside its perimeter. No crypto platform in India is SEBI regulated. RBI covers banking, payments, remittances and lending, which is a different perimeter again.

Is it legal for an Indian resident to invest in crypto?
Yes. There is no prohibition on individuals owning virtual digital assets. Gains are taxed at 30% under Schedule VDA, TDS is withheld on transfers, and losses cannot be set off or carried forward.

Does BitSave deduct TDS?
Yes, on both the purchase and the sale. The deductions are reported to the income tax department. Tax Corner in the BitSave app shows the running total for the financial year, and a tax statement can be requested there for filing.

Will my BitSave transactions show up in my tax credit statement?
Yes. TDS deducted on your buys and sells is reported and appears in your annual tax credit statement, Form 26AS and now Form 168. Your AIS carries the broader record of the same activity. You do not need to assemble or reconcile anything for it to appear.

Is BitSave an offshore platform?
Partly. Casper Wealth Holdings Limited is registered in ADGM, Abu Dhabi and owns the platform technology. BitPe Digital LLP is India-registered and handles domestic INR processing and distribution. Casper Wealth Inc develops the index products.

What happens to my assets if BitSave shuts down?
Assets are held by an institutional custodian off BitSave's balance sheet, which is what separates them from the platform's own finances. The full answer is covered in a separate article on platform insolvency.

This article is educational and not investment advice. Crypto products in India are not regulated by SEBI and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances. Consider your own position before investing.