Key takeaways:
- Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister, announced on Tuesday that the government is working on a new cryptocurrency bill that will take into account the fast changing dimensions of the virtual currency industry. It will soon be presented to the Cabinet and introduced into Parliament during the current session.
- “This bill, once the Cabinet clears, will come into the House,” Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament, heard from the finance minister.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responded to concerns in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday about the government’s cryptocurrency intentions and the crypto law, which is set to be debated during the current session of parliament.
According to the legislative program of the Lok Sabha’s winter session, the Official Cryptocurrency and Digital Currency Regulation Bill 2021 “aims” to outlaw all private cryptocurrencies in India but allows specific exclusions to promote the underlying technology of the cryptocurrency and its uses.
“There were other dimensions,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in response to concerns about the crypto bill. “The old bill had to be reworked, and now we are trying to work on a new bill.” She stressed the following:
“This bill, once the cabinet is approved, will come to the House.”
A prior version of the cryptocurrency bill was scheduled to be introduced in parliament; however, it was not passed.
Sitharaman praised the prior version of the law as a “real attempt,” saying:
“First attempt was certainly to come up with a bill for the House to study. But, later, because quickly many things had to come into play, we started to work on a new bill. This is the bill that is now being proposed.”
The crypto bill’s current version has not been made public. Only one crypto law has been produced by the Indian government so far, the one developed by an inter-ministerial committee (IMC) led by former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. The Garg Committee Bill, released in July 2019, provides a legal framework for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), but a ban on all other cryptocurrencies.
A few queries about incorrect and deceptive crypto marketing were also addressed by the Minister of Finance. She stated that no decision had been made to eliminate digital currency advertisements.
In the Lok Sabha on Monday, the finance minister responded to three questions about bitcoin transactions, a high-profile bitcoin scam in Karnataka, and the legality of cryptocurrency trading and crypto exchanges in India. First, she pointed out that the government does not keep track of bitcoin or cryptocurrency transactions. She also stated that there is no plan to recognize bitcoin as a currency.
