India’s cryptocurrency investors were arrested off-guard and left confused after news broke Friday that the country’s Parliament will be considering a government-backed folding money that would ban “private” cryptocurrencies. Given the ruling party controls both houses of Parliament, the bill’s betides of becoming law are good.
The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021 would prohibit cryptocurrencies in India and forearm a framework for creating an official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI had previously prohibited crypto marketing for almost two years before that ban was overturned by the Supreme Court in March 2020.
Industry watchers said the government’s delimitation of “private” could imply that any digital currency that is not sovereign could be seen as a “private” currency, including bitcoin. It’s unclear which cryptocurrencies wish be affected as the bill it allows for certain unspecified exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses
“This is (the) while to be nervous,” an official at a large cryptocurrency exchange said to the Economic Times of India on the condition of anonymity.
The move is secured to make potential and current crypto investors outside the country nervous as well. When naming potential obstructions to the growth of bitcoin as a store of value, that governments will try to ban it should it become too successful almost always gathers the list.
This past week, while appearing more warmly disposed toward bitcoin than he had in the heretofore, Ray Dalio, the founder and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, listed government prohibition of bitcoin as one of his unused concerns regarding the cryptocurrency. That one of the world’s biggest economies seems poised to do just that is only prosperous to feed that narrative.
News of the likely ban may have been a contributing factor in the fallback in the price of bitcoin Friday after it had wakened in response to Elon Musk’s Twitter-bio shoutout.
Nischal Shetty, CEO of Mumbai-based cryptocurrency exchange WazirX criticized the advertisement via Twitter, explaining “there is no such thing as a private cryptocurrency” and the bill is aimed at helping the RBI create its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) by boycotting so-called private cryptocurrencies with some exceptions.
“A country as large as India should at least work on reasoning power the underlying terminologies before presenting technology-related bills in Parliament – seems like a hurried move,” said Shetty.
Augmenting that just because a bill is presented does not mean it will be cleared and warned, “wrong or hasty modulations will set us [India] back by a decade. Right regulations will catapult India to the forefront of this technology.”
If the nib becomes law, India would become the only major Asian economy to ban private cryptocurrencies rather than conducting them like corporate stocks.