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Crypto players hope that a discussion paper will be released by September 2024. Image: Pexels/Alesia Kozhik
The Ministry of Finance has made it clear that the government is not considering a law to regulate the transaction of cryptocurrencies.
“Currently, there is no proposal to bring legislation for regulating the sales and purchase of virtual digital assets in the country,” Pankaj Chaudhary, Minister of State (MoS) in the Ministry of Finance, told the Lok Sabha in a written response recently.
The government is yet to make its commitment to establishing a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.
Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently stated that there should be a global understanding on cryptocurrencies and merely rolling out regulations by one country was not going to make much headway into the space of regulations.
In November 2021, Sitharaman — in a reply to a question on bitcoin in Parliament — had said that the government has no proposal to recognise Bitcoin as a currency.
What do the industry players think?
The crypto industry participants are not too pessimistic about Chaudhary’s statement, which was released at the behest of the Finance Ministry since they pin hopes on a discussion paper on digital currencies likely to be released next month.
“The Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) secretary indicated just a few weeks ago that a discussion paper is likely to be released by September 2024. We remain optimistic and will look forward to this paper to better understand the potential next steps for the virtual and digital assets (VDA) sector in India," says R Venkatesh, SVP and Head of Public Policy, CoinSwitch, a crypto company.
“We urge the government and regulators to take a lead in formulating a comprehensive regulatory regime for Web3/VDAs in India,” he added.
The finance ministers of G20 nations in October 2023 adopted the synthesis paper released by the IMF-Financial Stability Board (FSB) the previous month.
(By arrangement with livemint.com)
