India is on track to ban all but a few private cryptocurrencies after the government announced on Tuesday it was introducing a new financial regulation bill.
The ‘Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency’ bill will create a facilitative framework for an official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India, and ban all private cryptocurrencies.
Such a pre-verification approach would create obstacles for thousands of peer-to-peer currencies that thrive on being outside the ambit of regulatory scrutiny.
The price of Bitcoin dropped after the news was announced, falling 1.19 per cent in the last 24 hours and was trading at $56,615.97 (€50,483.89) at 12 pm CET on Wednesday, according to coinmarketcap.com.
Earlier this month, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said all democratic nations must work together to ensure cryptocurrency “does not end up in wrong hands, which can spoil our youth” – his first public comments on the subject.