This week seems to be at turning point in India's attitude towards cryptocurrency. We witnessed some signals and softening of tone against the ban on cryptocurrencies.
Participating in a webinar yesterday, titled "Cryptocurrency in India, what the future holds", India's former finance secretary and head of the Committee that had proposed a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies, Mr. Subhash C. Garg modified his stance against cryptocurrencies. Although he defended his earlier recommendations for ban on cryptocurrencies, he termed Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as a very promising Technology of the future.
He said that private cryptocurrencies shouldn't be legalised as any currency but they should be regulated as commodities.
He agreed that computer codes can have some value and should be regarded as some commodity. Not all commodities are required to be regulated by government. However, cryptocurrencies needs regulations because of their vulnerability to scams and ubiquitous ponzi schemes.
Even more strong signals came from CTO of National Stock Exchange, Mr. Shiv Kumar Bhasin. During the TCS
Quartz™ Live Event held this Wednesday, called ‘The New Age Crypto World", he talked about the importance of digitising all assets. Especially in the aftermath of covid-19, digitisation of assets like gold can play a significant role. Even though there is no regulatory approval at this time but they are working on developing these Technologies in hope that approvals will come soon from respective regulators. He said that Crypto is still not approved in India by regulators but regulators tell them to keep working on developing technology, so that once they prepare the legal compliance framework for the crypto technology, India don't lag behind in its advancement in crypto technology.
Now this is a very strong statement given in public by a person who currently holds the chair of CTO of National Stock Exchange of India.
(Check this video around 7 to 8 minutes time frame).
What do you make out from all these positive vibes coming from different quarters?