A senior government official in India has hinted that the country is proposing a law that will ban crypto trading and will punish anyone found holding such digital asset. The bill, considered as one of the world draconian policy against digital currency is set to criminalise its possession, issuance, and mining, trading and transferring crypto-asset to anyone within the shores of its country. Although the proposed law has raised investors hope as the agenda was to pave way for the government to have a grip on the market.
According to the source who speaks on the bases of anonymity said, the proposed law may give a window period of six months for all investors of the cryptocurrency to liquidate before the penalties will be rolled out. Officials are optimistic that the law may succeed as the prime Minister; Narendra Modi’s government has a grip of a substantial number of the parliament. If the law succeeds, India would be the first country and the major economy to criminalise the holding of a digital currency, even china who has banned mining does not criminalise its possession.
Bitcoin, considered as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, has last Saturday hit a record as high as $60,000, nearly doubling in value this year as its acceptance for payments worldwide has increased with support from such high-profile backers as Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk. According to an industry estimate, though not official, despite the government threat on its trade the Indian market have continued to swell in its transaction and about 8 million investors now hold 100 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) in crypto-investments,
Sumnesh Salodkar, a crypto-investor in the trade said, the market is rapidly increasing and they cannot continue to sit on the sideline even with the threat from the government, saying “Even though people are panicking due to the potential ban, greed is driving these choices.” Gaurav Dahake, chief executive, Unocoin one of India’s oldest exchanges, said it's user registrations and money inflows at local crypto-exchange Bitbns are up 30-fold from a year ago, he added that despite the worries on its ban, the market has kept on attracting investors.
Vikram Rangala, the exchange’s chief marketing officer said, ZebPay “did as much volume per day in February 2021 as we did in all of February 2020,” Top Indian officials have called cryptocurrency a “Ponzi scheme”, but Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman this month eased some investor concerns. The Minister told CNBC-TV18 that “I can only give you this clue that we are not closing our minds, we are looking at ways in which experiments can happen in the digital world and cryptocurrency,’
A senior government official told Reuters that, the plan is to ban private crypto-assets while promoting blockchain – a secure database technology that is the backbone for virtual currencies but also a system that experts say could revolutionise international transactions.
