Indian central government is reviewing the crypto ban bill for legislation that could ban cryptocurrency in the country. The Government, together with regulators and other stakeholders, is taking a relook at the bill.
According to report, the Government is focusing on 3 key issues
- Whether to impose a complete ban on cryptocurrency trading in India
- If they agree against this, the next step consideration will be how authorities should regulate them.
- Finally what kind of activities can be permitted and what should be discouraged.
Introduced the cryptocurrency and regulation of the official digital currency bill 2021 during budget session of parliament in spring. However, the central government is combing through the bill clause-by-clause. Therefore the bill is unlikely to be introduced in the upcoming monsoon session of the parliament. On the other hand, the Government had set up a committee to study regulation related to virtual currencies in 2017. The same committee also pitched for the introduction of an official digital currency issues by RBI.
A 2018 the Reserve bank of India barred cryptocurrency-related business and customers. However, the supreme court struck down this measure in March 2020.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said the central bank continues to have “major concerns” around cryptocurrencies. Recently, Banks started using the 2018 circulars to warn users about virtual currency transactions. However, RBI denied banks to use invalid circulars for it.
Last week Enforcement Directorate sent a notice to Wazirx one of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. In the notice, ED said cryptocurrencies are “money” for India Foreign Exchange Management Act or FEMA. Therefore, all Rules and requirements under FEMA will apply to these tokens.
Last week, there was a report that three major cryptocurrency exchanges – Kraken, Binance, and KuCoin are expanding their business in India.
