A few days ago, PTI ran a story saying that "Use of Bitcoin illegal, can attract anti-money laundering law". It cited a response in the Rajya Sabha by the Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal, but interpreted the statements incorrectly. Meghwal was responding to a question from Dr KVP Ramachandra Rao, about "whether Government shares the reported comment of RBI that virtual currencies pose a financial risk; and if so, how will it address the problem while pushing for a cashless economy?" To this, Meghwal pointed towards the position of the Reserve Bank of India "that it has not given any license / authorization to any entity / company to operate such schemes or deal with Bitcoin or any virtual currency", and more pertinently, that "any user, holder, investor, trader, etc. dealing with Virtual Currencies will be doing so at their own risk." Thus Bitcoin is in that space where it is neither legal nor illegal: unregulated. The absence of a regulation doesn't make it illegal. MediaNama readers might recall that in 2014, the RBI had said that it would not regulate any Virtual Currency including Bitcoin in India and warned people who were dealing with the currency in India of the risks involved, saying that they’re exposing themselves to financial, legal, operational and security related risk. Since then, the RBI has been "examining the issues associated with the usage, holding and trading of VCs under the extant legal and regulatory framework of the country, including Foreign Exchange…
