Reportedly, in a recent interview following the meeting of the World Banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, D.C, the Chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), Rajnish Kumar, has expressed optimism for the regulation of cryptocurrency in India.
It came as a relief to the long-debated declaration of ‘Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019’– submitted by the finance minister.
In the recent interview, the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, was also present, which makes the chairman’s comments more-weighty.
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The chairman commented:
The way the world is moving towards digitization, at some stage, a regulated cryptocurrency would be a better bet than an unregulated one. Because there’s a dark side of the internet also. There can be misuse of digital currencies. That is why regulation is must.
The Supreme Court hearing regarding the ban bill is scheduled for January 2020. It would also address the banking restriction imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the crypto industry.
The finance minister is still a skeptic. He commented on the issues of cryptocurrencies as a stable currency and the issues faced by Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency, Libra.
She stated:
Some of them (countries) of course even suggested that they shouldn’t be using, all of us shouldn’t be using the name stable currency because that’s the expression they used. Many cautioned to the extent saying even the name should not be stable currency, it should relate to virtual currency or something of the kind.
Even though Libra has been flagged red previously in the Indian soil for being a private cryptocurrency by the Former Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs, Subhash Chandra Garg, many firms like Cashaa, are on the look-out to tap the high volume in the Indian market.
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Cashaa had proposed to enable the purchase of cryptocurrencies with Indian rupees from this October. It will allow Indian residents to make purchases up to 1 crore INR each month.
