After months of public uncertainty bought on by years of deliberation
by the Indian government, authorities have discussed the framework to
legally ban the usage of ‘private’ cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
In the 19th meeting of the Financial Stability and
Development Council (FSDC) headed by India’s finance minister Arun
Jaitley on Tuesday, the subject of cryptocurrencies took the floor.
According to a release by the Indian Government’s Ministry of Finance through the Press
Information Bureau, the working group “deliberated on the issues and
challenges” of cryptocurrencies in the country.
Pointedly, an inter-governmental committee tasked to study and propose a legal framework for cryptocurrencies has,
instead, suggested a ban on using cryptocurrencies in India.
The full excerpt from the press release reads:
“The Council also deliberated on the issues and
challenges of Crypto Assets/Currency and was briefed about the
deliberations in the High-level Committee chaired by the Secretary
(Economic Affairs) to devise an appropriate legal framework to ban use
of private crypto currencies in India and encouraging the use of
Distributed Ledger Technology, as announced in the Budget 2018-19.”
It’s crucial to note the phrasing used in the public release here.
Enforcing a legal framework to ban the “use” of cryptocurrencies
could extend to trading and its application as a payment instrument but
not necessarily owning cryptocurrencies.
As domestic industry source CryptoKanoon, which has been following the entire saga, reports:
The domestic cryptocurrency trading has already been largely nullified as a result of the banking ban enforced by the central bank in April, leading to the shuttering of at least one major Indian exchange recently.
