The Indian government and leading industry stakeholders are reviewing elements of legislation that proposed a ban on cryptocurrencies, according to a report by Bloomberg Quint. The bill in question — the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021 — was drafted for introduction in the budget session of parliament, but was never introduced.
Fast Facts:
- The key elements of the bill under discussion are:
- Whether to impose a complete ban on cryptocurrency trading in India.
- Whether cryptocurrencies can be regulated by authorities, instead of a blanket prohibition.
- What kinds of activities can be permitted and what should be discouraged.
- India’s crypto industry has been dogged by regulatory uncertainty for some time. The country’s central bank issued a circular on May 31 reminding the finance sector that its attempt to ban banks from crypto-related activities had been overturned by the Supreme Court in March 2020.
- Faced with persistent uncertainty, some of India’s biggest crypto exchanges recently formed a self-regulatory body aiming at maintaining the industry’s anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer standards, among other things.
- The industry has also continued lobbying the government with calls for increased regulation allowing crypto businesses to continue to grow in a measured way, rather than implementing an outright ban.