India Most Likely To Introduce Cryptocurrency Regulations This July
A lot has been happening in the last few months with the uncertain state of cryptocurrencies in India. In April, the country’s central bank - Reserve Bank of India (RBI) - asked all the centralized banking institutions to cut off ties with the local digital currency exchanges. India’s local cryptocurrency community retaliated back to RBI’s decision asking he central bank to reconsider.
However, all these events certainly don’t indicate an end to the crypto operations in the country. As per the recent information produced by a high-ranking official, regulatory measures in India are underway and are likely to be implemented as soon as within the next one month. Reportedly, a draft has also been made ready as authorities are soon looking to arrive at a decision on this matter.
Subhash Chandra Garg, Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance said that the regulatory framework on digital currencies will be presented during the first-half of July 2018.
Mr. Garg who is heading the committee to discuss the future of digital currencies said: “We are fairly close to developing a kind of template which we think might be in the best interest of our country. We have prepared a draft which we intend to discuss with the committee members in the first week of July.”
Mr. Garg also mentioned that the committee has made a significant progress in determining “what part of business should be banned, what should be preserved, and what not.” He further stated that “We should be in the position to wrap this up in the first fortnight of July.”
Garg also hinted that the upcoming regulations would be focused towards introducing legal requirements for the crypto exchanges to operate and make the Know-Your-customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures mandatory for user accounts.
So far, there have been a lot of mixed signals coming from Indian authorities regarding the future of digital currencies. Earlier this year, the Finance Minister of India Arun Jaitely reiterated the official stand of the country that digital currencies won’t be regarded as legal tender. Since then, there have been intense crackdown on the cryptocurrency-related activities taking place in the country.
After RBI’s decision asking banks to cut-off ties with crypto exchanges, a number of companies have filed petitions with India’s highest judicial court. The Supreme Court has agreed to review this petition against the RBI and the hearing for the same is scheduled next week on July 3rd.