India’s cryptocurrency industry is lobbying for cuts to taxes that have curbed domestic trading, in a bid to take advantage of what it sees as New Delhi’s softening stance towards digital assets as lawmakers negotiate a wider trade deal with the US.

Once a pariah sector in India because of regulators’ suspicion about the potential for criminal activity, policymakers’ attitudes towards crypto have been thawing. Executives at exchanges told the Financial Times that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has become markedly more receptive and engagement more frequent following Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his embrace of digital currencies.

Industry meetings with policymakers now take place “monthly, if not weekly”, up from little more than once every six months until recently, according to Ashish Singhal, co-founder of CoinSwitch, one of India’s largest crypto exchanges with more than 20mn users. The industry’s “big ask”, he said, was a reduction in what he described as “very harshly” imposed taxes.