Crypto Ban in India??
Recently the world has known what Bitcoin is!!
Tech leading companies like Tesla, Apple, Paypal etc. have shown their deep interests in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has rallied almost 15 times since 2019. Also, big financial institutions have made investments in cryptocurrency resulting in the Bitcoin market cap has grown to 1 trillion USD.
Even witnessing the mass adoption worldwide, the Indian Govt. has not been keen on accepting the same. People in India have learnt about blockchain technology and a lot of people have invested and are trading in the same but the government seems very sceptical in regulating the cryptocurrency.
The Numbers :
Bitcoin as we all are aware has hit record highs of $60000 this week nearly quadrupling its value in 6 months. Elon Musk from tesla has acclaimed the technology as the revolution in the transparent banking industry and how blockchain technology has solved the double-spending problem. Not just investing in bitcoins, Musk, has become an ambassador to some other currencies offering solutions to critical problems.
Even mass adoption has not been able to stop the ban-threats of the Indian Govt. In fact, they aim to set the strictest standards in terms of banning cryptocurrency. The Initial blow this year was silent and peaceful when Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gave a hint of experimenting with cryptocurrency. We might come up with our own national cryptocurrency a person from the ministry added.
India has seen a huge amount of increase in the number of accounts opening with cryptocurrency exchanges. As per the Industry experts, More than 200,000 people have opened their account since October 2020. Over 100 billion Rupees have been invested in crypto assets. Despite the woes, people are ecstatic about the technology and the price of various currencies that have skyrocketed in the past 6 months.
The Bill :
The bill that is being discussed in the meetings states the hypocrisy of the government and the frustration of not being able to regulate it. The government might want to regulate it and yield revenue in the form of a tax but understanding the nature of cryptocurrency being pseudonymous they couldn't think of anything else but imposing a ban on the whole industry. The bill specifies on
penalising not only trading of the assets but also possessing and mining the same.
A bill introduced in 2019 also stated a jail term for 10 years if you are holding any crypto asset in your wallet.
Jail Term??
Jail Term??? Seriously?
Conclusion :
The Idea of the ban has been in the minds of the Indian Government since 2017, however in a country of 1.4 billion people it is hard to keep track of the ban, only the threat that they can create is the ban that they can impose. I will be back with further updates until then.