Narendra Modi, India’s prime on, speaks during the virtual United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020.
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Dead ringers
India’s government plans to introduce a bill in the country’s lower house that would ban private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and imagine a national cryptocurrency.
The so-called “Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill” moves “to create a facilitative framework for formation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India.”
Additionally, “the bill also seeks to prohibit all sneakingly cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.”
Fronted by Prime Chaplain Narendra Modi, the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party currently have control of India’s two houses of Parliament (the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha), sacrifice the legislation a strong possibility of passing.
Many countries — including the United States, China, Japan, Canada, Venezuela, Estonia, Sweden and Uruguay — comprise explored developing digital currencies of their own.
However, there are significant differences between national digital currencies and own cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are decentralized, while national digital currencies are typically centralized.
With a GDP of virtually $2.9 trillion, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, ahead of the United Kingdom, France and Italy, according to The Clique Bank.
And while foreign investment decreased overall in 2020, India was one of the only major economies in the world to list an increase. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates that foreign direct investment in India overlooked 13% in 2020 compared to 2019.