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How to trade crypto in India, step by step

Updated 2026-11-07 · 2784 signals tracked

• 59.5%Win rate
• 1.22Avg R
• 150TP2 hits
• 2784Signals

Trading versus holding

Holding means you buy a coin and keep it for months or years. You do not care about the next week. Trading means you buy or sell for a shorter move, and you plan to leave the position on purpose, either with a profit or at a small, planned loss.

This page is about trading. If you only want to hold, you can skip most of it, but the legal, tax and exchange sections still apply to you. If you are unsure which one you are, read is it a good time to buy Bitcoin first. It separates the two questions, buying and trading, which people mix up.

One honest warning before the steps. Trading for short moves is risky, and fees and tax come out of every result. That is not a reason to scare you off. It is the reason the steps below are slow and boring on purpose.

Before you trade: the legal and tax basics

Buying, holding, selling and trading crypto is legal in India, and the profit is taxed. Crypto is not legal tender. Read the Varsity chapter Is crypto legal in India? for the plain version, including what registration with FIU-IND does and does not mean.

Tax is where beginners get hurt. As Varsity explains in the flat 30% rule, profit is taxed at a flat 30% plus 4% cess, with only your purchase cost deductible. The chapter on the 1% TDS covers the 1% deducted on the value of a sale. A third chapter, why your losses do not count, shows why a loss on one coin cannot cancel a gain on another. Read that one twice. It changes how many trades are worth making.

Keep a paper trail from day one. The Schedule VDA chapter shows what to save. And ask a chartered accountant about your own case. This page is not tax advice.

Step 1: pick a registered exchange

Your exchange holds your coins and your rupees, so this is the choice that matters most. Start with choosing a crypto exchange in India safely, which walks through registration, custody, costs and withdrawals.

KYC

Expect to give your PAN, an Aadhaar-based or other ID check, a selfie and a bank account in your own name. Timing varies by exchange. Use your own details. Never lend your KYC to anyone, and never accept someone else's.

INR deposit

Deposit rupees from a bank account in your own name, straight to the exchange. Most Indian exchanges support UPI or bank transfer. Check the minimum, the fee, and how long a withdrawal back to your bank takes before you deposit a large amount.

What to avoid: P2P freeze risk

Peer-to-peer trades pay a stranger's rupees into your bank account. If those rupees trace back to a fraud complaint, your account can be frozen even though you did nothing wrong. Varsity explains the five red flags in P2P trades and frozen bank accounts. The safer default is a direct INR deposit on a registered exchange.

Step 2: start with spot, small size

A spot trade means you buy the coin itself with rupees or a stablecoin. You own it. The most you can lose is what you put in. That cap is what makes spot the right place to learn.

Start with the two largest coins and a stablecoin, so you learn how they behave. The chapter Bitcoin, Ether and stablecoins explains each one in plain words. Then trade an amount that would not change your month if it went to zero. Your first goal is to complete ten small trades and see how fees, tax and your own nerves behave. Profit is not the goal yet.

Prices swing hard. Why crypto prices swing so much explains why a 10% day is normal here. Better to learn that with a small amount.

Step 3: read a chart

You do not need fifty indicators. You need three ideas: what one candle says, what the trend is, and where price has turned before.

• Candles. One candle shows the open, high, low and close for a period. How to read a candlestick chart teaches it in one sitting.
• Trend and levels. Price trends up, down or sideways, and it tends to react at earlier highs and lows. See trend, ranges and price levels.
• Two indicators, no more. A moving average and the RSI are enough to start, and this chapter also says what they cannot do.

If you want the full path, Varsity's Module 2: Reading the Market collects these chapters in order. Charts describe what happened. They do not promise what comes next. What actually moves crypto prices is a useful reality check.

Step 4: size every trade by what you can lose

Most beginners pick a position size by feel, then pick a stop-loss far away so the trade has room. That is backwards. Fix the amount you are willing to lose first. Then let the stop decide the size.

Here is an illustrative example with round numbers, not a forecast. Say your trading money is ₹1,00,000 and you decide to risk 1% on one trade, which is ₹1,000. You plan to buy at ₹100 with a stop at ₹95. The risk per coin is ₹5. ₹1,000 divided by ₹5 gives 200 coins, so the position is ₹20,000. If the stop hits, you lose about ₹1,000, plus fees, and the account is intact. If you had bought ₹1,00,000 of the coin instead, the same stop would cost ₹5,000.

The share you risk is your choice, and a smaller share is more forgiving. The point is that the stop and the size are decided together, before you click. Module 6 of Varsity, Risk, Position Sizing and the Trader's Mind, goes deeper.

Step 5: write the trade plan

A plan is four lines. Write them before you enter, in a note or a notebook.

1. Entry: the price you will buy or sell at.
2. Stop: the price where the idea is wrong, and where you leave.
3. Target 1: the first price where you take the main part of the win.
4. Target 2: an optional stretch target for what is left.

That is the same shape every Drishti Pro signal has. If you want to see it applied, how to read a crypto signal breaks one down line by line. Then do the unglamorous part: follow the plan. Moving the stop further away once the trade goes against you is how small losses become large ones.

When a signal helps and when it does not

A signal is someone else's trade plan. It can save you the time of hunting for setups, and it shows a worked example of an entry, a stop and targets. It cannot know your money, your risk limit, your tax position or how you feel when a trade is down.

That is why the first test of any signal source is its record, not its marketing. How to evaluate a crypto signal provider lists the checks, and are crypto signals worth it weighs the cost. You do not need signals to trade. Many people trade for years without them. If you use them, use them to learn, with small size, and keep a note of what you would have done on your own.

Futures: not on day one

Perpetual futures let you trade with leverage, which means a small deposit controls a larger position. Gains grow, and so do losses, and a position can be closed by the exchange if the price moves against you far enough. That is called liquidation.

Varsity's chapter Perpetual futures, and whether you should is blunt: practise without leverage first. When you are ready to learn how they work, read how to trade crypto futures in India. It starts with the risks.

What a public record looks like

You will see many claims online. A public record looks different. Every signal is logged before the outcome is known, losses stay on the list, and a rule decides what counts as a win.

Drishti Pro's record, as of 2026-11-07: 59.5% of 2454 resolved signals won since 22 July 2026, with a 95% interval of 57.5% to 61.4%. Another 322 expired without reaching a target or a stop, and they are excluded from that rate. The average reward-to-risk is 1.22. The full list is on the track record page.

What it does not prove: that the next signal will win, that you would have got the same fills, or that a result from this period holds in another market. It is evidence about a method, shown in public. It is not a promise. For the Indian-hours view of how the signals run, see crypto trading signals in India, and for who is behind it, see about.

Where to go next

If you read one more thing, read Varsity from the start. It is free, it is written for Indian readers, and it covers each step on this page in more depth. When you want to see a live example of a plan with an entry, a stop and two targets, open the live signals.

Read the signals as examples. Paper-trade them first. Then decide for yourself.

See Drishti Pro's live signals Get the app

Educational & illustrative only — not investment advice. Drishti Pro publishes AI-generated trade ideas and their public track record for information. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Do your own research.