A member of the Indian government has said that he believes there should be a ban on ”private cryptocurrencies“, although the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) should be promoted.
Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs, Shri Subhash Chandra Garg, shared his opinions during a meeting held by the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC), headed by India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last week to give the Indian government just two weeks to produce a finalized version of digital currency policies, the FSDC meeting addressed this issue alongside its discussion of the current economic and financial situation in the country.
A press release shared by the government outlining the meeting details that upon Garg’s lead, the council deliberated on how to ”devise an appropriate legal framework to ban [the] use of private cryptocurrencies in India”.
A group of local lawyers under the Twitter handle Crypto Kanoon shared a quote from this release, querying whether this means both possessing and trading cryptocurrency would be prohibited.
Mr. Garg briefed FSDC Council on:
"..deliberations in the High-level Committee to devise an appropriate legal framework to ban use ofprivate crypto currenciesin India"
Does the abovesaid indicate that the possession and trading of Crypto are going to be permitted?#BPositive pic.twitter.com/RvfX0FhYOM
— Crypto Kanoon (@cryptokanoon) October 31, 2018
Despite the anti-crypto sentiment of the meeting, the release indicates that Garg encouraged the adoption of DLT in India.
Counting down
The Supreme Court’s two-week deadline for the government to produce regulations comes after months of outrage from the cryptocurrency community because of the central bank’s ban on facilitating any crypto-related transactions, was imposed in April. The original petition following RBIs decision has over 44,000 signatures to date, with a goal of reaching 50,000 calling for the government to reverse the ban.
With an infant crypto industry on shaky ground in India and numerous jobs on the line, the Supreme Court determined that it was the government’s responsibility to clarify direct policy on the matter.
These two weeks run out on 10 November.
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