Yes, according to the Madras High Court, crypto is property under Indian law. On 25 October 2025, in Rhutikumari v. Zanmai Labs, Justice N. Anand Venkatesh held that cryptocurrency is property capable of being possessed and held in trust. The court said it is not tangible property and it is not currency, but it is property. The order was interim and concerned a WazirX user's 3,532 XRP.
What that means in practice: if a platform holds your crypto, there is now a High Court view that it can be holding it in trust for you, as your property, not as its own. What it does not mean: it does not make crypto money, it does not create a crypto law, and it does not change the tax rules or the FIU-IND registration rules. It is one High Court, in an interim order. It is still important.
The case and the ruling
The case grew out of the WazirX breach. In July 2024, a multi-signature wallet at WazirX was breached and more than $230 million was lost, about 45% of user funds. Trading and withdrawals were halted, and the company went through a restructuring in the Singapore High Court, which approved an amended scheme on 15 October 2025.
A WazirX user who held 3,532 XRP brought a case in the Madras High Court against Zanmai Labs, the Indian entity associated with the platform. The question underneath it was simple to state and hard to answer: whose coins were those?
Ten days after the Singapore approval, Justice N. Anand Venkatesh made the interim order. The key holding was about the nature of crypto itself: it is property, it can be possessed, and it can be held in trust.
Property, not currency
Two words do a lot of work in this ruling.
Property. In law, property is something you can own, possess, transfer and protect. Calling crypto property means the ordinary rules of ownership can apply to it. Your Bitcoin is yours in the way your gold or your shares are yours, as a matter of legal character.
Not currency. The court was equally clear that crypto is not currency. That fits with the rest of Indian law. The Supreme Court's 2020 judgment that set aside the RBI's banking ban did not make crypto money either. Tax law treats it as a "virtual digital asset". And India still has no dedicated law on crypto governance, disclosure, investor protection or grievance redressal.
I have spent thirteen years watching Indian institutions slowly catch up with what Bitcoiners have said since the start: this is something you own. The Supreme Court in 2020 said banks could not be blanket-barred from serving the industry. The tax law in 2022 gave VDAs a definition. Now a High Court says they are property. Each step is small. Together they add up.
Held in trust: why it matters on an exchange
This is the part that matters most for ordinary users.
When you keep crypto on an exchange, you do not hold the keys. The exchange does. So what is your relationship with the coins? Are they yours, with the exchange looking after them? Or did you give the exchange your coins and now just have a claim against it, like any other creditor?
The difference becomes very real when something goes wrong. If the coins are held in trust for you, they are not the exchange's assets to spend, lend or use to cover other losses. If they are only a debt the exchange owes you, you may stand in line with everyone else.
The Madras High Court's view that crypto can be held in trust supports the first reading. It is an interim order from one court, and other courts may see things differently. But it gives users a strong argument.
It also shows why platform disclosures matter. Ask any platform where it holds customer assets and how. Unocoin, for example, states that 95% of assets are kept in cold storage with multi-signature wallets and regular security audits. That is Unocoin's own statement, and there is no independent public attestation of it on this site. Read every platform's claims with that same care.
What it does not change
- Tax. Gains from transferring a VDA are still taxed at a flat 30% under section 115BBH, plus surcharge and 4% cess. Losses still cannot be set off or carried forward. 1% TDS still applies on transfers under section 194S, now section 393 under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Check your case with a CA.
- Registration. Platforms serving Indian users still have to register with FIU-IND as reporting entities under the PMLA.
- Regulation. Crypto remains unregulated as an asset. There may be no regulatory recourse for losses.
- Legal status everywhere. This is a Madras High Court interim order. It carries weight, but it is not a Supreme Court ruling or a law passed by Parliament.
How to keep your own records
If crypto is property, treat it like property. That means documentation. When things go wrong, as they did for WazirX users, the people with clean records are the ones who can prove what they held.
- Download account statements from every platform at least once a year, and after any major event.
- Keep records of every purchase, sale, swap and transfer, with dates and rupee values. Your Schedule VDA needs this anyway.
- Take screenshots of your holdings from time to time.
- If you move coins to your own wallet, keep the transaction IDs.
And consider self-custody for at least part of what you hold. When you control the keys, the question of whether an exchange holds your coins in trust does not arise. You hold them. The trade-off is that you alone are responsible for your seed phrase. Write it down offline, never share it, never type it into a website. The self-custody and tax guide covers the records to keep when coins leave a platform.
The bigger picture
When we started Unocoin in 2013, people in India called Bitcoin funny money. The RBI issued cautions. In 2018 it told banks to cut us off, and we had to lay off about a hundred people. In 2020 the Supreme Court set that ban aside.
Now a High Court has said what we always believed: these are assets people own. It does not settle everything. It does not replace a proper law. But it moves the conversation from "is this even real" to "how do we protect people who own it", which is the right conversation to be having.
A simple test: could you prove what you own?
Here is an exercise I suggest to anyone holding Bitcoin in India. Imagine your platform froze tomorrow. Could you show, with documents, exactly what you held and when you bought it?
If the answer is yes, you are in the strongest position any user can be in, whatever a court later decides. If the answer is no, spend twenty minutes this week downloading statements and saving them somewhere safe. A ruling that crypto is property helps most the people who can prove the property is theirs.
For the full story of the 2020 case and how the industry survived it, read the Supreme Court story.
Common questions
Is cryptocurrency property under Indian law?
The Madras High Court held on 25 October 2025, in an interim order in Rhutikumari v. Zanmai Labs, that crypto is property capable of being possessed and held in trust, though not tangible property and not currency.
Is crypto currency in India?
No. The Madras High Court said crypto is not currency, and Indian tax law treats it as a virtual digital asset. It is not banned, it is taxed, and it is unregulated as an asset.
What did the Madras High Court say about WazirX?
The case concerned a WazirX user's 3,532 XRP after the July 2024 breach. In an interim order, the court held that crypto is property that can be held in trust, which supports the view that coins on an exchange belong to the user.
Does this ruling make crypto legal?
It does not change crypto's legal status. Buying and holding Bitcoin in India was already not banned. The ruling clarifies that crypto is property; tax rules and FIU-IND registration rules are unchanged.