Crypto Community vs Union of India, What Could Be Possible Outcomes?

As everyone knows, India is all set to have its general elections in April this year. Before that, the crypto community is hoping that it gets a ruling on the status of crypto exchanges and trading.

Since the past one year, the Indian community, through its representatives have been battling different government organizations in the Supreme Court, for example, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asking that they reexamine the ban that was imposed on Indian banks which kept them from working with India-based cryptocurrency trades.

BP Kanungo, the deputy governor of the RBI, said at the time –

“Regarding Ring-Fencing regulated entities from virtual currencies, digital tokens issued by private parties are getting international attention for quite some time, for their speculative value. Internationally, the regulatory response to these tokens is not uniform. It is universally failed that it sseriously undermines the airmail and FATF framework, adversely impact market integrity and capital controls.”

Kanungo had added –

“If they grow beyond a critical size, they can influence the financial stability as well. In the past, RBI had cautioned on three occasions including the members of the public regarding the various risks they are undertaking by exposing themselves on cryptocurrency. Now, we have decided to ring-fence the RBI regulated Entities from the risk of dealing with entities associated with dealing with virtual currencies. They are required to stop having relationships with entities dealing with virtual currencies within three months.”

Supreme Court of India, in the intervening time, has announced a number of dates as well as adjournments, urging the Union of India to come up with guidelines to govern digital currencies. The adjournments were chiefly owing to the delays in filing counter petitions by the Union of India.

Abraham C Mathews, a Supreme Court lawyer, recently posted an article against regulating cryptocurrencies. With regards to the RBI imposing its ban on cryptocurrencies, Mathews had said –

“This is, unfortunately as far as the central bank can go. You cannot regulate (remember, the regulations also work as an assurance to citizens who deal with regulated entities) something that you don’t have some semblance of control over. Suppose a Bitcoin exchange is registered with the government or the RBI, and let’s say, it gets hacked, the probability of coins being recovered or the perpetrators being discovered is alarmingly low. Nothing that the government introduces or requires can change this fact.”

As of Now, The Matter Stands Thus

A two-judge bench led by Justices, Rohinton F Nariman and Vineet Saran, on mutual understanding has extended the deadline by March 25th, 2019 to the Union of India to come up with the proper rules and regulations in this regard.

Rohan Dwaipayan Bhowmick, a Supreme Court advocate, said –

“4 Weeks time has been provided as the last opportunity to the Union of India in order to file the rules and regulations.”

Let’s hope that the “last opportunity” is really meant in spirit as this litigation has been extended long enough and now deserves a speedy conclusion.

Kapil Gauhar

Kapil Gauhar is the founder of Blogger’s Gyan. He is a Passionate Blogger, a Big Thinker and a Creative Writer. His passion for doing friendship with words and letting people know about the wonders of the Digital World is what motivates him to take writing as a career.