If, since its implementation, the ban on exchanges of cryptocurrencies wanted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), caused major misunderstandings, such as those expressed by the billionaire and Bitcoin evangelist Tim Draper, many asked a simple question: Why ?
Request for right to information on the ban on RBI
It would seem that the instigator of this ban, the RBI itself, does not know why it banned last April, as abruptly as it was brutal, to close the bank accounts of cryptocurrency trading platforms, and accounts of their users, under three months.
The counter-attack was not long in coming, especially through the lawyer and legal counsel Varun Sethi who, from April 9, had filed a request for right to information on this arbitrary decision of the Central Bank of India.
RBI's responses were revealed by Varun Sethi, as explained by Quartz India: this ban did not come from the conclusions of a research paper, from the conclusions of a committee, nor from the search for information from 'other countries. In fact, we still do not know the basis of this decision, as long as there is one that is valid.
As the lawyer in Quarte India explains:
"It seems that the ban was arbitrary and came into force without any thought from the RBI. She either answered in the negative, or gave contradictory answers to our questions asking what led to this ban (...) The RBI specifically mentions that she did not conduct any research or consultation before the introduction of the restriction. in April ". Varun Sethi
Petition against the RBI: before the Indian Supreme Court in July
Several Indian exchanges had gathered in a petition against the Indian Central Bank, to file a petition against his prohibition order before the Supreme Court of India, this petition will be heard on July 20.
As Nischal Shetty, founder and CEO of WazirX (an Indian exchange) says:
"They [the BRI] have released this ban, which has monumental consequences, without doing significant research and so it seems to be a decision made with a lot of lightness".
According to the Economic Times, Rashmi Deshpande, one of the lawyers representing one of the petitioners before the Supreme Court "This response from the RBI [right to information] has concretized our file before the hearing at the Supreme Court . The motives behind our petition are that the RBI has not done enough research before completely banning an economic sector. "
Even the Indian government, through the creation of cryptocurrency universe committees, seems to distance itself from its central bank. Since there do not seem to be any good reasons, at least not presented by the BIS, perhaps we can guess: an instinctive and irrational fear of evolution and progress, or a fear of losing one's privileges? Everyone is free to imagine his "why".