India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance did something in May 2026 it had never done before: it sat down formally with the country’s three largest cryptocurrency exchanges and asked, on the record, why so much of India’s crypto economy was leaving. The answer that WazirX, Binance, and ZebPay gave the committee on May 20 was not complicated. India’s flat 30% tax on every crypto profit, paired with a 1% tax deducted at the source of each transaction regardless of whether a profit or loss occurred, has driven roughly 90% of the country’s crypto trading volume to offshore platforms — costing India approximately $6.1 billion a year in capital that no longer moves through the domestic financial system.

Parliament heard it. The…