The government's decision to ban crypto-currencies in India, signals that it is ready to regulate the crypto-currency industry in India which should be taken as a positive, says Nischal Shetty, founder and chief executive officer, WazirX. In an interview with MediaNama, Shetty said that with crypto-currencies now valued at over $1trillion, India has the opportunity to grab at least 10-20% of this market if not more. Nearly two weeks ago, the government announced that it would introduce The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, which will ban “private” crypto-currencies while at the same time providing the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with the requisite legal powers to develop a central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC), according to the official Lok Sabha Bulletin Part II for the Budget Session 2021 of Parliament. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament that as per the government’s previous position, it does not consider crypto-currencies as legal tender and will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto-assets in financing illegal activities or as part of the payments system. Anurag Thakur, the Minister of State for Finance told Parliament on the same day that Bill is being finalised and would be sent to the Cabinet soon, and thereafter introduced to Parliament. While the government wants to promote the use of blockchain across various use-cases, it has decided to enter the global race of digital currencies or CBDCs while at the same time banning “private” crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum among…
