The NEW Bill seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India
There have been several report on a new bill that seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, and I was trying to understand if HIVE would be trapped in this. If you want to see the bulletin then its here : http://loksabhadocs.nic.in/bull2mk/2021/29012021.pdf
It's classified under the 'E' New Bills (20) section and termed as The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 - No 12. And its going to be taken up during the Fifth Session of Seventeenth Lok Sabha and the motion proposed to be moved is Introduction, consideration and passing. Given that the current government has full majority, it would not take much for them to pass it, once its considered. However, as we see, its also mentioned that, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of crytptocurrency and its uses.
HIVE definitely has advantage to qualify under the exceptions, given it's nature of open source, decentralization and fee less blockchain. And more ever, the social side of the blockchain has a niche use case. Hopefully, there will be debates during the introduction and consideration phase and all the stakeholders associated with cryptocurrencies will be given fair chance to represent their opinions, before the government takes any decision.
At this moment, I think, they can insist to regulate all the cryptocurrencies, at least the open source ones since they would not fall into private category. At best, they can ask exchanges to provide any transaction details and most of them are already doing that since the last ban.
If you try to open an account in any exchange today, you will be asked to provide all the details including biometric data. And majority of the exchanges have already taken care of old accounts, updating all the details. So every transaction is monitored. And the exchanges can provide all the details as they have already completed the readiness.
So at best , the govt may put some stringent tax regime under Capital Gains Tax , but only time will tell whats going to unfold.
Until then, I am not going to panic and continue using my investment in hive. What's your strategy, if you belong to India ?