By Shelly Melancon (Switzerland)
The Economic Times media has revealed that India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, has confirmed that the cabinet has received a new cryptocurrency policy bill, but it has yet to approve it. The minister said, “the cabinet’s remarks on the bill are available, but waiting for them to make the approval.” The news media also disclosed that a committee to study digital assets was created in the first quarter of this year.
Part of the report of that committee is to shut down any private digital currencies, except India’s digital currency. This year’s committee and a similar one created four years arrived at the same conclusion- a ban on all private virtual currencies. The only difference was that this year’s committee added more regulations to the previous committee’s crypto bill, such as punishments for violations and jail time.
Confusion Reigns
The report from the ad-hoc committee is the opposite of what the country’s finance minister said earlier in the year. You’d recall that the minister assured every Indian that the authorities wouldn’t ban crypto at the time. But before his assurances, the country’s apex bank had always reiterated the need for the country to ban crypto.
The Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Shaktikanta Das, once said that “private digital assets have zero consonance with the monetary concept. They don’t have any use since they can’t serve as claims on physical items or be owned physically. They don’t have that historical concept that we all grew up knowing about money.”
Indian authorities have been unable to make a final decision on an outright cryptocurrency ban or flexible crypto policy for over 12 months now. Despite being made available to the parliament this year during its budget session, it wasn’t read. However, the parliament may discuss the bill during their next session, provided the cabinet grants them clearance towards the end of this year.
If the legislation passes this bill, it might lead to a complete crash of the country’s nascent cryptocurrency market. Responding to the developing news, Sathvik Vishwanath co-founder of Unocoin, opined that most of the over 16 million crypto investors would be at the losing end since the majority of their investments are in crypto.
You’d recall that Indian authorities recently revealed that it doesn’t have any information regarding anything going on in the crypto space, including remission of tax returns or profits. Hence, if this ban becomes a reality, the crypto-related start-ups, which are almost 400 right now, would have hoped they did the needful before the ban.
Government’s Hidden Motive Or The Right Thing To Do
The Unocoin co-founder further opined that Indian authorities should have thought of the long-term before proposing this bill. Hence, they would have enough information to back up their decision. However, “authorities have always seen the virtual currency space as one for illegal financial activities; so, its motive was to ban it outrightly based on that bias.”
He further revealed that any technology could be abused, and it isn’t right to curtail a technology because it has a few bad actors. The best option is to find the means to kick off the bad guys.
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