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Investors queasy as prospect of India crypto ban returns

Investors queasy as prospect of India crypto ban returns

In this issue

  1. India crypto ban: Winter is coming
  2. Jack Dorsey: All in on Bitcoin
  3. China payment systems: Code red 

From the Editor’s Desk

Dear Reader,

If Bitcoin and the crypto revolution were a breakout against governments and their centralized control of money, some governments now seem in the mood to show the decentralized upstarts who’s boss.

In India, one of the world’s most exuberant crypto markets, the bill for the good times came due in more ways than one at the end of last week, with local Bitcoin and Ethereum investors seeing the value of their holdings plunge amid the specter of an outright ban on cryptocurrencies.

The bill that literally came due — the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, which “seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies” — was put on lawmakers’ agenda for the legislative session that kicked off this week. Its eventual impact on the country’s crypto sector remains as yet uncertain.

What’s more certain is that the legislation aims to pave the way for the introduction of a central bank digital currency in the country.

In China, meanwhile, the development of a CBDC is light years ahead of New Delhi’s stated aim — let alone the musings of the minders of the U.S.’s monetary system.

And if there were any doubt that the world’s most populous nation might be big enough to accommodate financial networks other than the one planned for Beijing’s digital money, authorities took yet another step this week to remind the peons who calls the shots, introducing new rules to corral digital payments into China’s emerging CBDC ecosystem.

Many have described China’s digital yuan as a means of extending oppressive state surveillance and control over every aspect of Chinese people’s lives. Few have called out India’s plan for a digital rupee in anything like the same terms.

That may change. But one thing is indisputable: the great crypto experiment is not without powerful enemies, and its decentralizing promise will always require a robust defense.

Until the next time,

Angie Lau

Editor-in-Chief

Forkast.News


1. India’s crypto winter 

New Delhi’s e-rupee plans may be driving a proposed law that could hammer India’s crypto industry. Image: Envato Elements

By the numbers: India crypto ban — over 5,000% increase in Google search volume. 

An Indian proposal to ban private cryptocurrencies is set to be put before the country’s lawmakers as part of parliament’s winter session. With a new crypto bill in the offing, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that legalizing Bitcoin for payments was not on the government’s agenda, and that the government was not collecting data on Bitcoin transactions. 

Forkast.Insights | What does it mean?

India’s stance on crypto has mirrored that of other states grappling with the explosion of interest in the digital asset market. 

In the U.S. and the U.K., regulators didn’t pay much attention in crypto’s early days. More recently however, watchdogs have been calling for a more rigorous approach to keep the explosion of crypto in check. India is no different.

Although Indian authorities have gone further than most, with the Reserve Bank of India effectively aiming to crush crypto in an instruction to the country’s lenders in 2018, a Supreme Court setback for the central bank in 2020 suggested the matter might have been settled. However, crypto is now significantly bigger in India than it was in 2020. 

Statistics show the scale of the growth is a headache for the central bank. Not only are India’s retail investors pouring into crypto, with an estimated 15 million active in crypto trading (although this figure has been met with skepticism by the country’s central bank chief), but so too are bigger players, with transfers worth more than US$10 million making up 42% of transactions sent from India-based addresses in the 12 months to June.

As in China, the movement of large amounts of money through unregulated channels is making authorities nervous. India is also forging ahead with its own central bank digital currency, for which it wants the same protections as Beijing. 

If the planned crypto bill passes, it will likely be sold to the public as a package of measures to help protect new investors. But in reality, India is seeking to demonstrate that it can match its neighbor to the north with tough regulation and protection against capital flight. 


2. Behind Jack’s Twitter toodaloo

Loud and proud: Twitter’s now-former chief has become an unabashed Bitcoin booster.
Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images 

By the numbers: Jack Dorsey — 5,000% increase in Google search volume.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey appears to have embraced “the great resignation,” quitting his job as the company’s CEO to pursue his Bitcoin dreams at Square, a payments company he founded. Dorsey had declared his desire to focus on Bitcoin at an industry conference in June. 

Dorsey wrote in an email to the Twitter team: “There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led.’ Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure.” He shared the email publicly as a tweet. Former Chief Technical Officer Parag Agrawal was immediately promoted to Twitter’s top job.

Forkast.Insight | What does it mean?

Despite his celebrity CEO status, Jack Dorsey’s record at Twitter was mixed. In the six years he served as chief executive — his second time in the role after being ousted in 2008 — the social network underperformed in the markets, struggled to moderate harmful content, and failed to grow its user base as rival networks ate into its market share. 

Like many high-profile tech company founders, such as the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, Dorsey has made a habit of getting involved in multiple companies at once. 

Also like the Amazon and Tesla chiefs, he has a devout following that hangs on his every word. His move into crypto wasn’t surprising, although his potential impact on the industry is the subject of much speculation. 

The biggest players in crypto — such figures as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys — are typically somewhat reserved characters with an obsessive focus on the products and companies they helped create. Dorsey, by contrast, has been characterised as impulsive in the many books written about him. Indeed, two years ago, he surprised staff and investors by announcing plans to move to Africa for up to six months a year. 

Although that move did not materialize, it highlights the challenges that lie ahead for Dorsey. Crypto, with its trademark volatility, regulatory issues and performance bottlenecks, is a tough nut to crack at the best of times. Is Dorsey, who prefers sewing and yoga to product and code, the man to do it? Time will tell. 


3. China’s QR Code of conduct

Tightening rules around QR codes is the latest in a series of measures to ensure that the digital yuan dominates China’s payment systems. Image: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

China’s central bank has issued new rules for mobile payments in an effort to crack down on illicit activities associated with personal collection QR codes, non-commercial codes used for transfers of money between family and friends. The new rules, set to take effect in March, will compel merchants to stop using the codes — the use of which is widespread among small businesses in China — in favor of merchant QR codes. Analysts from Chinese finance sector heavyweights including Everbright Securities, Huaxi Securities and Huaan Securities have suggested that the central bank’s move will give the country’s new state digital currency, e-CNY, an edge over mobile payments made through companies such as Alipay and WeChat. The two mobile payment platforms operate a duopoly in China’s non-bank payment sector, with a combined market share of more than 90%. 

Forkast.Insight | What does it mean?

China’s finance sector authorities have struck again. Although the use of off-the-radar QR codes by small businesses may appear trivial when compared to Beijing’s grander offensive against tech companies engaging in finance-related activities, it’s a singular example of regulators actively making it more difficult for private businesses to compete with the juggernaut that is e-CNY. 

China has gone further than any other major country to consign the private cryptocurrency industry to history — putting India’s potential crypto ban, to which we referred earlier in this edition of The Current Forkast, in the shade — although some holdouts remain

The announcement of QR code rule changes can be seen as putting the finishing touches to what has been a year-long demonstration of the Communist Party’s overweening power and control. Alipay and WeChat Pay, once the darlings of China’s lightning-fast tech industry, are now having to roll back innovation — and pay hefty fines — as part of the push for the pre-eminence of Beijing’s state-run digital currency. 

Alibaba Group, which owns Alipay, has seen its share price sink by 50% in the past six months and Tencent, WePay’s parent company, has seen a similar decline. Beijing is betting big on its digital currency, and it doesn’t appear particularly concerned with commercial collateral damage. 

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