Kashmir's High-Stakes Crypto Craze

As cryptocurrencies capture the imagination of Kashmir's young investors, the lessons of risk, regulation, and restraint are being learned the hard way.

- Irshad Mushtaq

In a small internet café in Srinagar, two friends discuss “the next big coin.” One of them shows an app on his phone, with graph rising in steep green lines. “It’s going to explode soon,” he says with conviction.

This is a familiar scene in Kashmir these days. The youth, fluent in digital language and eager for opportunity, have found in cryptocurrency an alluring promise of fast wealth.

But, as with most speculative booms, the excitement often outpaces understanding.

The crypto fever sweeping Kashmir reflects a broader pattern of high-risk investing emerging across smaller Indian towns, where aspiration meets limited financial literacy.

The result is an ecosystem of misplaced trust, overconfidence, and, increasingly, loss.

In theory, cryptocurrency offers the thrill of autonomy: no intermediaries, no banks, and endless upside. But in practice, it remains an unpredictable, often manipulated market.

Data from CoinMarketCap shows that over 20,000 digital coins exist globally, but more than 95 percent of trading volume is concentrated in fewer than 50 established cryptocurrencies.

The attraction has shifted from these global giants like Bitcoin and Ethereum to lesser-known “low-volume” tokens circulating through social media and messaging apps in Kashmir. They promise extraordinary returns, often backed by slick marketing and fabricated success stories.