[Cryptography] India Crypto Currency Ban

John Levine johnl at iecc.com
Sun Apr 8 10:59:59 EDT 2018


In article <CAD2Ti29+oFe+8UC+aQkqTbLAUY986Ficf6kWpp0LtSZBdg4-=g at mail.gmail.com> you write:
>On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 4:23 AM, Sandeep Kamboj <sandeep2147 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "India Crypto Currency Ban"
>> India's central bank has announced a ban on the sale or purchase of
>> crypto-currency.

>No such jurisdiction beyond themselves.

The RBI regulates all the banks in India, so this means that no Indian
bank can handle cryptocurrencies.  I expect this will shut down any
cryptocurrency exchanges in India since the banks, who do not want to
annoy their regulator, are unlikely to provide them with bank
accounts.

Indian rupees are not widely traded outside India so this means that
if Indians want to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, they're back to the
pre-Mt.Gox situation of trying to find someone local who'll trade them
for cash.

Keep in mind that there are only about 10 million Bitcoin wallets in
the world, and I doubt as many as a million of them are in India.
There are over a billion people in India so we're talking about under
0.1% of the Indian population.  Also keep in mind that India is still
a poor country, where rural phone ladies rent mobile phones by the
call and data plans start at the equivalent of 15c for a few minutes
of data.  Even if cryptocurrencies were a good idea, which they
aren't, India doesn't have the infrastructure to use them other than
by rich people in cities.

Since the badly handled withdrawal of high value banknotes in November
2016 (I was there, same week as the US election) Indian banks have
pushed hard to provide conventional electronic payments with credit
and debit cards.  I was impresssed how many of the stalls at markets
had handheld card terminals.

R's,
John

PS:

>Fake News!

I suppose it's fake news the way some politicians mean it, news that I
wish were not true.

>RBI stock price drops on news as competitors move in.

The RBI is run by the Indian government, does not issue stock, and
since it is the central bank, has no competitors.  Were we saying
something about fake news?


More information about the cryptography mailing list