In the past there have been political call to declare cryptocurrencies as illegal, however, the central bank of India – Reserve Bank of India- has issued caveats to the users of these currencies to deal with them at their own risk. As is buying, selling, trading, or mining is not illegal per se under the existing framework of law in India. Cryptocurrencies if not legal, its most certainly unregulated in the Indian market. This lack of regulation has made the case of Indian cryptocurrency industry establishing their own self regulatory body by the name of Digital Asset and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI).
Talk about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the Indian Parliament was set to motion with the doubt, if the cryptocurrency was a “ponzi scheme” in order to regulate this relatively new industry. This lead to the formation of inter-disciplinary committee by the Indian Finance Ministry in April, 2017. The committee was vested with the task of taking opinion of legal status of these cryptocurrencies under the framework of Indian law and also studying the legal structures governing crypto’s in other countries, in order to protect the consumer interests. As part of this study the government also invited suggestions from the public on to the website www.mygov.in.
Perhaps its disheartening to realise that this long awaited decision has been served to us with no plausible outcome for the Indian crypto investors. The committee has recommended the government to take immediate steps to discourage the use of cryptocurrencies. The reasons cited in the recommendation are to protect people frauds, money laundering, terrorism etc.
This comes in the times where cryptocurrencies have started gaining popularity amongst Indian investors and since have been in soring demand. Moreover, RBI has been optimistic about the technology of Blockchain to check counterfeiting and other banking problems.
Right from trading into cryptocurrencies to mining them is becoming the trend. Since demonetization cryptocurrencies have gained awareness and since then has started becoming popular amongst Indian investors.
The report is yet to come in the public domain and so is awaited. So it remains to be seen how the government adopts these recommendations.
Meanwhile, what do you guys think about cryptocurrencies, should they be illegal? Upvote and Leave your Comments I would love to read what you think about it.
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