The Indian government official who headed the committee which drafted the bill to ban cryptocurrencies has applied for voluntary retirement after releasing the report and draft bill which the crypto community calls “flawed.” Meanwhile, the government has confirmed that cryptocurrency is currently not prohibited in the country and the recommendations are being examined by relevant authorities.
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Crypto Recommendations Heavily Criticized
India’s cryptocurrency bill has been drafted by an interministerial committee headed by former Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. The committee began working on crypto recommendations since November 2017 and finally submitted its report with a draft bill to the Ministry of Finance on July 22. After both the report and the bill were made public, Garg tweeted that his “Committee is very receptive and supportive of distributed ledger technologies [DLTs] … [but] Private cryptocurrencies are of no real value. Rightly banned.”
His tweet did not fare well among the Indian crypto community, as comments soon flooded his account in response. Some criticized his definition of private cryptocurrencies. “Sir, BTC is not private, it’s more transparent than your INR,” a comment reads. Others pointed out that crypto is the future in advanced countries and banning it would cost India jobs, investments, talent, and more.
The community was also quick to point out that cryptocurrency is not banned in India despite Garg’s tone which could be misconstrued otherwise. A number of people contested the committee’s finding that “There is no underlying intrinsic value of these private cryptocurrencies,” with some arguing that embracing DLT while banning cryptocurrency is ludicrous. News.Bitcoin.com recently reported on the content of
